skippy the bush kangaroo

Monday, November 21, 2005

plan b d …q: saddam's iraq without saddam?

under u.s. design, iraq's new army looks a good deal like the old one - the two are at the core of the remaking of iraq's security forces. the first u.s. administrator of iraq, l. paul bremer, disbanded hussein's army. but since then, iraq and the united states have drawn upon hussein-era soldiers, many of them from the ruling baath party, to rebuild iraq's military. the process was well underway when the iraqi defense ministry called last month for recruits from among junior officers in hussein's military.

"the biggest mistake u.s. forces made was to disband the iraqi army," said ghalib, speaking over the summer at a graduation ceremony for recruits. "it's then when the chaos started," especially when civilians in some cases were put in charge of training, he said. [snip]

but there are still doubts. one is whether iraq's sectarian communities, under arms, will hang together or turn against one another. even at the graduation ceremony at kirkush in august, many of the heavily kurdish forces could do the wave in the stands, at u.s. coaching, but could not talk to their arabic-speaking fellow troops. petraeus at the time acknowledged the risk but declined to venture how it would turn out. [snip]

in taji, alwan, the sunni army captain, was ready to set a timeline for significant u.s. withdrawal. "two years," alwan said. if the americans pull out before that -- before the government is steady, the constitution set and the army trained -- it "means we would go to civil conflict," he said.

at least two years and hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives later, the best we can hope for is the restoration of a sunni dominated military which may or may not defer to the new shia political leadership class. just when you think you have imagined the true depths of incompetence of awol's regime, you discover that it's always worse than you can imagine.

posted by Pudentilla at 3:47 AM |