Fallows' piece "Why Iraq Has No Army" is online.

[BurtWorm]

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:GAOYDoh1NG8J:www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil/search/Articles/NoIraqiArmy.pdf++site:www.smallwars.quantico.usmc.mil+smallwars+%22Why+Iraq+Has+No+Army%22+Fallows&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

...

In sum, if the United States is serious about getting out of Iraq, it will need to re-consider its defense spending and operations rather than leaving them to a combination of inertia, Rumsfeld-led plans for "transformation," and emergency stopgaps. It will need to spend money for interpreters. It will need to create large new training facilities for American troops, as happened within a few months of Pearl Harbor, and enroll talented people as trainees. It will need to make majors and colonels sit through language classes. It will need to broaden the Special Forces ethic to much more of the military, and make clear that longer tours will be the norm in Iraq. It will need to commit air, logistics, medical, and intelligence services to Iraq and understand that this is a commitment for years, not a temporary measure. It will need to decide that there are weapons systems it does not require and commitments it cannot afford if it is to support the ones that are crucial. And it will need to make these decisions in a matter of months, not years before it is too late.

America's hopes today for an orderly exit from Iraq depend completely on the emergence of a viable Iraqi security force. There is no indication that such a force is about to emerge. As a matter of unavoidable logic, the United States must therefore choose one of two difficult alternatives: It can make the serious changes including certain commitments to remain in Iraq for many years that would be necessary to bring an Iraqi army to maturity. Or it can face the stark fact that it has no orderly way out of Iraq, and prepare accordingly.

[aquart]

1. Exactly. None of which Bush is willing or able to do.

I've just read the bit on DU, not the whole article. Does it include the reality that our presence under any circumstances whatsoever will remain a magnet for revolt? Does it include the reality that the "Iraqi army" we train will be an iron-fisted tool of a dictatorship and NOT the arm of democratic government? Does it face that?

We want to believe there's a way to win. No. We lost by showing up.

[BurtWorm]

2. According to The Washington Note, Bush's speech yesterday

was partly an answer to Fallows:

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001124.html

UPDATE: George Bush's speech this morning is almost entirely a counter-point response to James Fallows' important cover story in the Atlantic Monthly this month. Bush seems to be asserting that Fallows' assessment and math are wrong.

I'll be commenting on this later, but my sense is that Fallows went into extensive, nearly tedious detail about the thus far failed effort to train and "stand up" Iraqi security forces. The President's assertions about the great successes training Iraqi forces do not stand up to scrutiny. SCC