One of the biggest shocks for Lt. Col. Nick Demas and his troops came before they even deployed to Iraq.
The colonel's soldiers, most of them inexperienced reservists from Maryland, had been tapped to serve as advisers to the Iraqi army. Their job was to live with, train and mentor an Iraqi force buffeted by poor morale, desertions and corruption.
President Bush has touted such advisory teams as key to the U.S. strategy for stabilizing Iraq and bringing American troops home. So Col. Demas and his troops expected some of the best instruction the Army had to offer. What they got was a "phenomenal waste of time," the colonel wrote from Iraq last fall, in a report to his superiors.
"In my 28 years of military service I have never seen such an appalling approach to training," he wrote. "Nowhere else in the Army system would this have been acceptable." His soldiers received only a few hours of instruction in Arabic language, Iraqi culture and advising foreign forces, says Col. Demas, who had previously served in Special Forces units...
Senior U.S. military officers in Iraq and the Pentagon say their primary focus is getting Iraqi forces to take over more of the fighting as quickly as possible so U.S. forces can pull back. The 10- to 12-man advisory teams are central to that effort.
In recent weeks, Army officials overseeing the advisory program have begun to acknowledge the gap between the Army's words and deeds. This summer, after two years of biting reviews, the Army rushed to revamp the training advisers receive. It also has begun to assign more experienced troops to advisory teams. "I think we are going to be doing it much, much better than what you have seen in the past," says Gen. Richard Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff.
Internal Army reviews and interviews with dozens of advisers show that, thus far, the Army hasn't treated the advisory program as a priority. The job has often fallen to the military's less seasoned second team: reservists, guardsmen and retirees called back to active duty. A 48-page Army study, finished in May and marked "For Official Use Only," concluded that 10- to 12-man advisory teams are too small and "do not have the experience to advise in the various areas they are assigned."...
To date, the U.S. has trained and equipped about 307,800 Iraqi army and police forces, up from 196,600 a year ago. But three years into the war, these Iraqi forces don't seem to be improving fast enough to curb surging violence. Daily attacks in Iraq have risen to record levels, and attrition among Iraqi forces remains high. In areas like the restive al Anbar Province, Iraqi units have, on average, only 55% of the soldiers they are supposed to, senior U.S. military officials say.
Other factors, of course, are also contributing to the violence. Centuries-old sectarian grudges and political turmoil are feeding unrest. Both must be addressed through some form of reconciliation, military officials say.
For many advisers, the growing turmoil has been frustrating. "I know we've made a difference. But the insurgency has also become better, more lethal and more capable in my time here," wrote Capt. Phillip Carter, who advised Iraqi police, in an email last month as he prepared to return home. "In theory things should get better with the development of capable Iraqi Army and police units. That's not happening."...
Top Army officials also are trying to change a culture that discourages good officers from taking advisory posts. Over the past decade, the path to success has been through conventional combat jobs in big brigades. Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army's top officer, uses a track analogy to describe the problem. The Army, he says, is full of specialists, or "single-event people." To prevail in today's wars, he says, he needs "pentathletes" with a broader range of experiences.
Last month Gen. Schoomaker's vice chief of staff stressed in a memo to Army officers that serving on an advisory team was "the Army's No. 1 personnel priority" and was exactly the kind of broadening experience the Army chief had been touting.
To fix the advisory program, some military officials say sweeping institutional change is needed. "When there is a limited pool of people for both kinds of jobs -- combat and advisory -- it's clear where the best people will go," says Dale Andrade, a counterinsurgency specialist at the Army's Center of Military History. "The military will always keep its best and brightest in traditionally important combat jobs. Only when forced will this change."
One option under consideration is to double the number of advisers to about 7,000, from about 3,500, by tearing apart some traditional combat brigades and assigning officers and senior soldiers to advisory teams. That would ensure that some of the Army's best officers would take advisory jobs. It would also allow Army officials to double the size of the teams -- which the officials say are too small -- to about 20 troops each.
But doing so would require a change in mind-set for the Army, where training centers and personnel systems are built almost entirely around the 4,000-soldier brigades. It would also be risky. As the number of big U.S. combat brigades decreased, Iraqi units and their advisers would have to pick up the security slack...
Pseudo-Histories of the Iraq War
Originally Posted by kaur
) and, while it may sell in Washington, it will just make matters much worse on the political home front.
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