Iraqi Troops Say Army Is Willing, but Not Ready, to Fight Alone

[RamboLiberal]

Source: NY Times

KHAN BANI SAAD, Iraq — Ahmed Mahmoud, a lieutenant in the Iraqi Army, lost one leg fighting the insurgency and says he would not quit his job even if he lost the other. He believes in his army.

But asked whether that army is ready as a national defense force, capable of protecting Iraq’s borders without American support, Lieutenant Mahmoud gestures toward his battalion’s parking lot. A fifth of the vehicles are rotting trucks and bomb-demolished Humvees that, for some complicated bureaucratic reason, are still considered operational.

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While Americans and Iraqi civilians alike are increasingly eager to see combat operations turned over to the Iraqi Army, interviews with more than a dozen Iraqi soldiers and officers in Diyala Province, at the outset of a large-scale operation against insurgents led by Iraqis but backed by Americans, reveal a military confident of its progress but unsure of its readiness.

The army has made huge leaps forward, most of the soldiers agreed, and can hold its own in battles with the insurgency with little or no American support. But almost all said the time when the Iraqi Army can stand alone as a national defense force is still years away.

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“It is 2008,” said Lt. Col. Muhammad Najim Khairi, a young officer in the Third Battalion of the Iraqi Army’s 19th Brigade. “We are too many years behind other countries. We need the coalition forces until 2015.”





Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/world/middleeast/06soldier.html?hp

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Give me a break, in WWII we raised an the Army and Marines, Navy, and Army Air Corp., trained them in a matter of weeks and helped win a war against 2 very good militaries in not quite 4 years.

Meanwhile Iraq is sitting on 79 billion oil surplus. Time to say bye-bye, you're on your own Iraq.

[kirby]

1. Reminds me of this...