To oversimplify the situation a bit, the Iraqi security forces — or lack thereof — are the primary element to national stability that keeps American forces on the ground. With this mind, it’d be nice if someone had a clue how many people are actually in said security force and ready to serve.
We already know that Bush finds this subject terribly confusing. In October, he insisted we had already trained 100,000 and were on track to have 125,000 by the end of December. Bush didn’t know what he was talking about — at the time of the claim, we’d only trained 8,000 and the Pentagon didn’t think we’d see see a fully trained Iraqi police force until July 2006.
More recently, it’s Condi Rice who’s confused about this.
The pace and effectiveness of U.S. efforts to train Iraqi security forces, a central factor in the Bush administration’s exit strategy, became part of the debate yesterday over Condoleezza Rice’s nomination to be secretary of state.
Rice, whose nomination was endorsed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, told the panel that 120,000 members of various Iraqi security forces are now trained and equipped, a number that falls short of initial goals but shows progress.
It might show progress, but it doesn’t show reality. As Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) noted, the number of Iraqis who are trained, equipped, and able to fight the insurgency is no more than 14,000. In other words, neither Rice nor her boss has a clue, or they know and are trying to deceive people. Neither option is altogether encouraging.
Can’t anybody here play this game?
Yes, there’s progress. If we had 8,000 fully trained Iraqis in October and have 14,000 now, it’s clearly a step in the right direction and it should be acknowledged. But it’s a very tiny step when a large leap is necessary.
As is often the case in deciphering the administration’s dissembling, semantics matter. Anthony H. Cordesman, a former Pentagon official who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, recently explained that there may be 120,000 Iraqis with uniforms, but it’s an irrelevant number — they’re not fully trained troops who can fight the insurgency without protection from U.S. troops.
“It’s sort of like counting the insurgency,” Cordesman said. “All of the numbers are probably valid and almost none of them are relevant. What we have seen since June is a clear commitment to create more effective Iraqi forces. What we have seen is serious progress. What we have never seen from any administration official is even a hint that we are going to create credible, independent, Iraqi security capabilities that can survive on their own in the numbers that can make significant reductions in U.S. forces to give the Iraqi government an independent arm for action.”
And then, unfortunately, there’s the issue of the current status of the broader Iraqi security forces. For example, how many of this limited defense force has been killed during the ongoing war and has that number been subtracted from the overall totals? According to the administration’s own über-hawk, Paul Wolfowitz, Iraqi security forces are being killed at a disturbing rate.
“I’m more concerned about bringing down our casualties than bringing down our numbers,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in an interview with PBS television’s “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” program. “And it is worth saying that since June 1, there have been more Iraqi police and military killed in action than Americans.”
I suspect Wolfowitz’s point was that American casualties could be a lot worse, but when considering the question of what kind of Iraqi security force is being created, his assessment of their casualties is more-than-a-little discouraging.
Moreover, as reader P.R. emailed me recently, this is a band of Iraqi soldiers burdened by a series of doubts.
It would be interesting to also deduct the number that have deserted or otherwise vanished, the number that are considered possible infiltrators and not to be trusted and the number deemed unreliable by American supervisors to see just how many of these forces can actually do their job (not that anyone would wish to be in their place.)
Quite right. It’s the kind of detail that the White House would clearly prefer not to discuss.