Training Iraqis
I was reading this Atrios post and I started to wonder… why exactly does the Iraqi military need any training from the US at this point or going forward? I can understand in 2003, 2004, and maybe in 2005 – when you dismiss much of the existing military, you essentially need to train replacements from scratch. Its especially difficult, we’re told, to train NCOs and the lower echelon of the officer corps – lieutenants and captains.
But by now, the Iraqi military has been in some semblance of combat for almost five years. If five years of actual combat isn’t enough time to produce a generation of capable NCOs and officers who could then train the next generation of Iraqi military, how exactly are American personnel supposed to be useful?