According to the study, the panel agreed with U.S. and Iraqi officials that the Iraqi army is capable of taking over an increasing amount of day-to-day combat responsibilities but that the military and police force would still be unable to take control and operate independently in such a short time frame.
"They are gaining size and strength, and will increasingly be capable of assuming greater responsibility for Iraq's security," the report states, adding that special forces in particular are "highly capable and extremely effective."
The report is much more pessimistic about Baghdad's police units. It describes these units as fragile, ill-equipped and infiltrated by militia forces. And they are led by the Interior Ministry, which is "a ministry in name only" that is "widely regarded as being dysfunctional and sectarian, and suffers from ineffective leadership."
Accordingly, the study recommends disbanding the national police and starting over.
Nothing surprising here. The army is shaping up and their are pockets of excellence. But the Iraqi military will rely on us for more than 18 months before they have the logistics, administrative, and other supporting functions to operate without our help. This is part of the plan. We trained light infantry first to fight insurgents while we supply logisitics, firepower, medical support, and other combat support until the Iraqis built their capacity.
What I am amazed about is the recommendation that we disband the national police.
Recognizing the problem, we are screening the force and retraining them. And we are looking at leadership which is key to keeping the units loyal to the government.
And there is something about the solution being offered that seems oddly familiar.
Disband the national police? Wasn't that a widely agreed mistake that we made in 2003 in regard to the Iraqi army? Not that I agree with that assessment of the need for keeping the Iraqi army in place. I'm just saying that Congressional leaders who condemn the elimination of the already self-disbanded Iraqi army shouldn't be so eager to disband the national police. Won't that just put thugs on the streets who will join Shia death squads?
And remember, the idea that we could have kept the Iraqi army in place focused on the Sunni Arab leaders as people we should have employed rather than put out on the street. Given the importance of leadership to a unit's loyalty, as the Jones' report notes, would it really have been wise to have "ex" Baathist leaders controlling Iraqi military units?
Look, we could probably get away with disbanding the national police and starting over. It is fairly small. But its small size also means we have a better shot at sifting the force and rebluing it.
So nothing surprising in this report if you've paid attention all along.
UPDATE: Frederick Kagan writes that the press has highlighted the negative. He highlights the positive parts of the report.
Kagan also addresses an issue that is fairly ignorant for critics of the war to emphasize:
The issue of their "independent" operations is and always has been a red herring.
I noted this in the original post and I've expanded on this theme in the past. Let me recap.
Independent operations means that Iraq can raise, train, and support troops in the field without outside help. This means they supply themselves, evacuate their casualties, establish communications, call in their own fire support, conduct their own reconaissance and intelligence missions, plan their own operations, and pull the triggers in close battle with the enemy.
We have focused on the last part and are succeeding. The rest will take far longer to achieve. And honestly, few of our allies are capable of independent operations. They rely on us for logistics support and other supporting functions. Heck, our Marine Corps relies on the Army for logistics support for operations inland. During the invasion in 2003, tens of thousands of Army support troops were attached to the Marine Expeditionary Force.
Our press still seems determined to lose this war. Instead of focusing on who, what, when, where, and why, they've focused on what should be according to them.
