Did you ever wonder if you were going crazy? I wanted to grab the country, the leaders, and shake them! Listen to me! Get this! My obsession with one aspect of the civil war in Iraq caused me to wonder about my sanity at times. It kept me up to the wee hours and awake early in the morning.
Now that my theory about Iraqi troops has been vindicated, I am sad. In diaries for months I tried to draw attention to a basic flaw in the Bush policy--something that was being ignored by the MSM and politicians. Something that directly contradicted the fantastical Bush policy. In reading reports from various news sources and independent journalists, one problem seemed clear to me, and though I tried to hit people over the head with it, no one seemed to pay attention.
Today the Iraq Study Group's report makes this point clearly. What was this point?
Remember this? "As they stand up, we will stand down."
Bush's mantra. We are building up the Iraqi Army and Police Forces, and "making progress." We get them ready to fight and protect their young democracy from those "insurgents" who "hated our freedoms" and did "not want to see democracy in the Middle East." A week before the election, one month ago, Bush said in a speech in the south: "We are going to succeed in Iraq, and it will bring glory to America."
Police routinely engage in sectarian violence, including the unnecessary detention, torture, and targeted execution of Sunni Arab civilians.
Iraq Study Group Report Released (Excerpts)...
Significant questions remain about the ethnic composition and loyalties of some Iraqi units specifically, whether they will carry out missions on behalf of national goals instead of a sectarian agenda. Of Iraq's 10 planned divisions, those that are even-numbered are made up of Iraqis who signed up to serve in a specific area, and they have been reluctant to redeploy to other areas of the country. As a result, elements of the Army have refused to carry out missions.
As I said in this diary, American Troops--Iraq on the Brink of Chaos
Troops have their loyalties to their own sect. Sunnis do not want to fight Sunnis and Shites do not want to fight other Shites and in this way the army is segmented. Thus, the civil war in Iraq has more far-reaching consequences than is ever explained to the people.
Because none of the operations conducted by U.S. and Iraqi military forces are fundamentally changing the conditions encouraging the sectarian violence, U.S. forces seem to be caught in a mission that has no foreseeable end.
Problems with the Iraqi Army include
- Poor leadership and poor leaderhsip training.
- Troops have divided loyalties.
- Very inadequate equipment: Congress has resisted funding their equipment needs.
- Troops cannot work together.
- Soldiers are off 1/4th of the time to visit their home and take their pay which is in cash since there is no banking system!
- Troops are less than 50 percent "ready" at any given time. When called to Baghdad, urgently last summer, only one-third showed up.
Problems with the Iraqi Police forces:
- Police have questionable loyalties. Are they loyal to the police or to their sect first? Some are militia men.
- Police are not trained to conduct criminal investigations and lack legal authority to do so.
- Police are unable to control crime or fight organized crime, militias or insurgents.
- Police who are militias members are often controlled by Ministries that are often corrupt. Some units are simply referred to as "militias."
- Iraqi forces may be simply unwilling to control areas that have been swept clear by US forces.
- They do not have adequate ammunition or vehicles.
"SUBSTANCE OVER RHETHORIC DEBATE is needed and deserved by the people." The report is right about that!