The Americans are back in Iraq - and today the Australian Government announced the deployment of another 300 troops to the war-torn country.
But for all the Allies' much touted claimed success in Iraq the facts seem to be quite the opposite - as this report from The New York Times makes so very clear.
"Colonel Schwemmer was stunned at the state in which he found the Iraqi soldiers when he arrived here. “It’s pretty incredible,” he said. “I was kind of surprised. What training did they have after we left?”
Training stopped, and the army did little more than staff checkpoints. Then, last year, four divisions collapsed overnight in Mosul and elsewhere in northern Iraq under the determined assault of Islamic State fighters numbering in the hundreds or at most the low thousands, and the extremists’ advance came as far as this base.
An army that once counted 280,000 active-duty personnel, one of the largest in the world, is now believed by some experts to have as few as four to seven fully active divisions — as little as 50,000 men by some estimates — although the director of media operations for Iraq’s Ministry of Defense, Qais al-Rubaiae, said that even by the most conservative estimates, the army now has at least 141,000 soldiers in 15 divisions.
Most of the American soldiers were intimately involved in training Iraqi forces before, too. “When I left in 2009,” Major Moblin said, “they had it, they really did. I don’t know what happened after that.”
“We used to say that every deployment was different,” Major Moblin said. “But we quickly found out that this time was completely different from any other time. The Iraqis know that this time we’re not going to do it for them, and they appreciate that.”
The 300 American soldiers here, with a smaller number of United States Marines at Al Asad air base in Anbar Province, are the only American soldiers deployed outside Baghdad. But as the military sees it, they do not count as “boots on the ground” since their role is purely to train, advise and assist, as part of a 3,000-person deployment authorized in November by President Obama.
In fact, Master Sgt. Mike Lavigne, a military spokesman (one tour in Iraq, and three in Afghanistan), does not like that term at all. “We do not have a single boot on the ground,” he said. “Really, not one.”
Even in a training role, however, this venerable Iraqi military base puts American soldiers very close to what passes for a front line in the conflict with the Islamic State. From time to time, the extremists, also known as ISIS or ISIL, lob mortar rounds from their hiding places east of the base, just across the Tigris River.
There is little chance they will hit anything. The base is huge, and their aim is as bad as it was in Al Qaeda’s day, when the Americans were last here — and also used it as a major training base. Nonetheless, no one goes around without body armor on."
But for all the Allies' much touted claimed success in Iraq the facts seem to be quite the opposite - as this report from The New York Times makes so very clear.
"Colonel Schwemmer was stunned at the state in which he found the Iraqi soldiers when he arrived here. “It’s pretty incredible,” he said. “I was kind of surprised. What training did they have after we left?”
Training stopped, and the army did little more than staff checkpoints. Then, last year, four divisions collapsed overnight in Mosul and elsewhere in northern Iraq under the determined assault of Islamic State fighters numbering in the hundreds or at most the low thousands, and the extremists’ advance came as far as this base.
An army that once counted 280,000 active-duty personnel, one of the largest in the world, is now believed by some experts to have as few as four to seven fully active divisions — as little as 50,000 men by some estimates — although the director of media operations for Iraq’s Ministry of Defense, Qais al-Rubaiae, said that even by the most conservative estimates, the army now has at least 141,000 soldiers in 15 divisions.
Most of the American soldiers were intimately involved in training Iraqi forces before, too. “When I left in 2009,” Major Moblin said, “they had it, they really did. I don’t know what happened after that.”
“We used to say that every deployment was different,” Major Moblin said. “But we quickly found out that this time was completely different from any other time. The Iraqis know that this time we’re not going to do it for them, and they appreciate that.”
The 300 American soldiers here, with a smaller number of United States Marines at Al Asad air base in Anbar Province, are the only American soldiers deployed outside Baghdad. But as the military sees it, they do not count as “boots on the ground” since their role is purely to train, advise and assist, as part of a 3,000-person deployment authorized in November by President Obama.
In fact, Master Sgt. Mike Lavigne, a military spokesman (one tour in Iraq, and three in Afghanistan), does not like that term at all. “We do not have a single boot on the ground,” he said. “Really, not one.”
Even in a training role, however, this venerable Iraqi military base puts American soldiers very close to what passes for a front line in the conflict with the Islamic State. From time to time, the extremists, also known as ISIS or ISIL, lob mortar rounds from their hiding places east of the base, just across the Tigris River.
There is little chance they will hit anything. The base is huge, and their aim is as bad as it was in Al Qaeda’s day, when the Americans were last here — and also used it as a major training base. Nonetheless, no one goes around without body armor on."
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