Everyone's known from the start that US forces won't leave Iraq until the Iraqi people themselves can keep their country safe. That's why Bush has played games with the number of Iraqi troops that are properly trained. He's been purposefully misleading the American people -- first by throwing out any numbers he thinks he can get away with and then pretending they actually mean something.
Bush and his surrogates keep pounding away at the idea that 140,000 Iraqi troops have been trained (adding sotto voce that this number includes troops broken down into three groups -- some ready to battle on their own, some who can fight side by side with the US and the rest who, apparently, have been given an "I'm an Iraqi soldier" baseball cap and sent on their way).
That figure -- 140,000 -- is a lie, plain and simple. Bush knows perfectly well that the facts don't back him up and yet he stood in front of the American people on national television in primetime last month and lied. As we've said before, only 2,500 are fully trained (that is, can fight on their own -- which is the only standard that matters). About 8,900 can fight with our help. That means about 130,000 of those troops Bush keeps mentioning can't fight even with our help. So 90% of the Iraqi troops are useless in battle.
Now more news is coming out. A terrific London Review of Books article on corruption in Iraq also takes a pass at those Iraqi troops:
This February, the State Department glowingly reported that almost 82,000 Iraqi police and 60,000 troops had been trained.And the Independent in the UK gives further detail about how corruption has left Iraq with a "ghost army."
These figures are grossly misleading. According to the GAO’s March report to Congress ‘the reported number of Iraqi police is unreliable because the Minister of the Interior does not receive consistent and accurate reporting from the police forces around the country. The data does not exclude police absent from duty.’ As for the army, ‘Ministry of Defense reports exclude the absent military personnel from its totals. According to DOD officials, the number of absentees is probably in the tens of thousands.’ Furthermore the State Department no longer reports on whether Iraqi security forces have the required weapons, vehicles, communication equipment and body armour. Bluntly, ‘US government agencies do not report reliable data on the extent to which Iraqi security forces are trained and equipped.’ The GAO further found that the Iraqi police are being trained for ‘community policing in a permissive security environment’ rather than getting ‘paramilitary training for a high-threat hostile environment’. It’s hardly surprising that close to 2000 Iraqi police have been killed.
This is all horribly reminiscent of American policy in Vietnam. American troops are staying in Iraq to stiffen Iraqi forces who are dying in droves in an escalating counter-insurgency war that neither the Americans nor the Iraqi forces are prepared for. The Americans originally allocated $5.8 billion to build the Iraqi security forces. In February this year, George Bush asked Congress for another $5.7 billion to go towards this task.
The Iraqi armed forces are full of "ghost battalions" in which officers pocket the pay of soldiers who never existed or have gone home. "I know of at least one unit which was meant to be 2,200 but the real figure was only 300 men," said a veteran Iraqi politician and member of parliament, Mahmoud Othman. "The US talks about 150,000 Iraqis in the security forces but I doubt if there are more than 40,000...."In other words, that fake number of 140,000 Iraqi troops is even faker than we thought. These facts don't come from critics or outsiders -- most of them come from the military itself. Ask 50 questions about Karl Rove, please. But how about pounding away on Iraqi troop training. Bush misled the American people in that nationally televised speech -- and Iraqi troop level is the most essential element in creating an Iraq that our soldiers can walk away from in pride. How long is Bush going to lie about it before he gets nailed by the MSM?
The corruption started under the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003 when Iraqis, often with little experience, were appointed to senior positions in ministries. The Iraqis did not act alone. "The Americans were the partners of the Iraqis in all this corruption," says Dr Othman. The results of the failure to buy effective arms are visible at every Iraqi police or army checkpoint. The weapons on display are often ageing Kalashnikovs. The supposedly elite police commandos drive about in elderly pick-ups with no armour. The ministry of the interior was recently unable to provide a presidential guard with 50 pistols.
