LOSING BIG TIME IN IRAQ

In January I wrote an article about a dispute between Condoleezza Rice and Sen. Joe Biden over the number of trained Iraqi troops. The number trained is obviously the single most critical number relative to Iraq since it is the number, more than any other, which determines when our troops can come home, i.e., when a sufficient number of Iraqi troops are trained to take the place of our troops. Rice, at her confirmation hearings in January, said there were 120,000 troops trained while Biden claimed there were only 3000.

It seemed incredible that there was no agreement at the highest levels of our gov't on such a basic and absolutely critical piece of data. In the end I assumed Rice was lying when she corroborated her number only by saying "I have to rely on what I was told" while Biden said he had gone over to Iraq and talked to those who were actually doing the training. Both relied on hearsay but Biden was far closer to the source.

The number came up again the other night (8 months later) when I saw two retired Republican Generals, still with extensive contacts in Iraq, who were on TV to provide the inside dope on how many Iraqi troops were actually trained to the point where they could operate independently of American troops. They both looked very sheepishly and sadly into the camera while admitting that only 2 battalions were really trained. At the time it did not mean much to me since I didn't know what a battalion was. It turns out that an Iraqi battalion is only 700 lousy men! This means that in all the years we have only trained 1400 men of the 200,000 or so that would be needed to hold the country together in our absence. I assume, if there were 50,000 or even 20,000, the administration would be making it clear, loudly and often, but they are not. In fact they have just moved to make the number classified.

Looking around the Internet, the Administration has no optimistic numbers floating around at all it seems. There is talk of the Transition Readiness Assessment. This is the latest methodology by which Iraqi troops are now assessed for readiness. Here is the way it seems to turn out: "of 81 Iraqi army battalions assessed, only three were rated green, able to conduct operations independently." By that estimate there are 2100 troops trained, but that too is almost nothing. As of this writing (8/15/05) Sen. Biden has indicated his most recent trip to Iraq puts the number of trained troops at 3000.

This means almost certainly that we are losing, and that probably we cannot win ever. The Iraqi people won't fight for us and against each other. When Dick Cheney said very recently, " we are witnessing the last throes of the insurgency" when in fact the insurgency looks far stronger than ever, you had to think this is Vietnam, only worse, all over again. As much as I love Republican Jeffersonian Libertarian philosophy it is hard to imagine how such pure delusion can serve that purpose over the long run. When, General Casey, once the Pentagon's top man in Iraq, said in January, "we may never be able to train enough Iraqis" he was apparently right.

So what do we do now? For starters, where does the tough talking and proud Bush Administration find the courage to change course? After all, we don't want a badly conceived and executed tactic in the war on terror to give the Democrats, who have no tactics and no strategy at all, except, possibly, anti Americanism, an opportunity, if only an opportunity by default.