Spider
03-21-2006, 12:04 PM
cant wait to see this Generals new terrorist name................
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/11/international/middleeast/11army.html?ei=5090&en=69f7023888dd3070&ex=1297314000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
The Military
General Says Training of Iraqi Troops Suffered From Poor Planning and Staffing
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By THOM SHANKER
Published: February 11, 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 — The American general in charge of training the new Iraqi military after Baghdad fell says the Bush administration's strategy to use those forces to replace departing American troops was hobbled from its belated start by poor prewar planning and insufficient staffing and equipment.
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Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton congratulating an Iraqi soldier in Jordan in June 2004, when the general was in charge of rebuilding Iraq's military.
The Reach of War
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Readers
Forum: The Transition in Iraq
The account by Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who retired on Jan. 1 after 33 years in the Army, suggests that commanders in Iraq might by now have been much closer to President Bush's goal of withdrawing American forces if they had not lost so much time in the first year to begin building a capable Iraqi force.
General Eaton's views, drawn from an essay he is preparing for publication and from interviews in which he broke a long silence on the topic, were broadly affirmed by Pentagon and other civilian officials involved at the time. They agreed that the mission had also been slowed by conflicting visions from senior Pentagon and administration officials, civilian administrators in Baghdad and the former top commander of the military's Central Command, which carried out the invasion.
While he criticized others for decisions that led to what he called a false start, General Eaton accepted responsibility for the most visible setback in the training, when a battalion of the new Iraqi Army dissolved in April 2004 as it was sent into its first major battle. The Pentagon sent Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who had commanded the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion and early occupation, to review the program and then to take over the training mission after General Eaton completed his yearlong tour.
"Paul Eaton and his team did an extraordinary amount for the Iraqi Security Force mission," said General Petraeus, now commander of the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. "They established a solid foundation on which we were able to build as the effort was expanded very substantially and resourced at a much higher level."
General Eaton was commander of all Army infantry training at Fort Benning, Ga., when he was told on May 9, 2003 — just over a week after President Bush's "mission accomplished" speech — to hurry to Baghdad, where he was to set up and then command an organization to rebuild Iraq's military.
"I was very surprised to receive a mission so vital to our exit strategy so late," the general said. "I would have expected this to have been done well before troops crossed the line of departure. That was my first reaction: 'We're a little late here.' "
Pentagon officials initially told him that rebuilding the army was their fifth priority for Iraqi security forces, falling behind the civil defense corps, the police, border forces and guards for government buildings, power plants and oil lines.
L. Paul Bremer III, chief of the occupation government, insisted that police training not fall under the military, but under his civil administration. Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who planned and carried out the invasion of Iraq, made sure that retraining and managing the Iraqi armed forces would not burden his war-fighting headquarters at Central Command, and insisted that the task be managed by a separate unit with its own staff and budget, General Eaton said.
Some major allies, alienated by American policies, also refused to contribute experienced military personnel, General Eaton said. In particular, Germany and France, which have taken part in rebuilding Afghanistan's military after the war in that country, declined to assist in Iraq to show their disagreement with the invasion.
"We set out to man, train and equip an army for a country of 25 million — with six men," General Eaton said. He worked into the autumn with "a revolving door of individual loaned talent that would spend between two weeks and two months," he said, and never received even half the 250 professional staff members he had been promised.
The general's broad assessment of the problems he confronted was seconded by Walter B. Slocombe, sent by the Bush administration to Baghdad for six months to serve as the senior civilian adviser on national security and defense.
Mr. Slocombe, an under secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, said: "I have to agree with General Eaton, that it was hard to get the resources we needed out there. There was not a broad enough sense of urgency in Washington."
General Eaton said his small staff "thought we were going to build an army in a benign environment, that we were going to be able to incubate this army." The rise of a tenacious insurgency ultimately killed that hope, but at the start of his tour, the main problem was not the insurgency, which had not yet emerged in full force; it was the chaos that followed the invasion.
He arrived as looting swept Iraq, causing a bitter debate in Washington that focused on whether more American troops should have been committed to the occupation. He had to rebuild bases and barracks that had been stripped bare by looters.
Although the Iraqi Army had dissolved during the American-led invasion, the decision by Mr. Bremer and the Pentagon not to preserve or recall any complete Iraqi units meant the training task was bigger than expected.
It also left General Eaton without any Iraqi noncommissioned officers. Training an army without noncommissioned officers to serve as drill sergeants is like pitching a tent without poles.
He also found that a civilian contractor hired to conduct training would be incapable of imparting military skills and discipline — what he called "soldierization."
In a Sept. 5, 2003, briefing in Baghdad for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, General Eaton proposed speeding up the program by sending former Iraqi Army officers for training at a base in Jordan, and setting up a separate academy in Iraq for training noncommissioned officers. Mr. Rumsfeld approved the plan.
Scrounging the most basic equipment for the new Iraqi military was another problem. "We were told to find anything we needed for the soldiers — boots, canteens, rucksacks, belts, beds, blankets," General Eaton said. "We were directed to pull it from Iraqi sources where possible."
He said the most important accomplishments that first year were organizing the command structure, beginning construction of military bases across Iraq, setting up officer training in Jordan and the noncommissioned officer academy, and attracting troop contributions from nine nations.
But problems with the nascent security force became painfully clear when the first battalion of the new Iraqi Army ordered to fight insurgents ran away in April 2004 as it was being sent to Falluja to fight alongside allied forces against an uprising in the restive Sunni triangle west of Baghdad.
"The only serious mistake I committed was that I did not stop the employment of the Second Battalion in Falluja," General Eaton said. "This battalion had been originally recruited to defend Iraq from external enemies. And as they attempted to move over land to Falluja, they ran into a Shiite mob that fired into the trucks and cajoled these young Iraqi men for fighting with the occupier against their own citizens."
He said the Iraqis the Americans had selected "failed their leadership; they failed in contact."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/11/international/middleeast/11army.html?ei=5090&en=69f7023888dd3070&ex=1297314000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
The Military
General Says Training of Iraqi Troops Suffered From Poor Planning and Staffing
Article Tools Sponsored By
By THOM SHANKER
Published: February 11, 2006
WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 — The American general in charge of training the new Iraqi military after Baghdad fell says the Bush administration's strategy to use those forces to replace departing American troops was hobbled from its belated start by poor prewar planning and insufficient staffing and equipment.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Khalil Mazraawi/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton congratulating an Iraqi soldier in Jordan in June 2004, when the general was in charge of rebuilding Iraq's military.
The Reach of War
Go to Complete Coverage
Readers
Forum: The Transition in Iraq
The account by Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who retired on Jan. 1 after 33 years in the Army, suggests that commanders in Iraq might by now have been much closer to President Bush's goal of withdrawing American forces if they had not lost so much time in the first year to begin building a capable Iraqi force.
General Eaton's views, drawn from an essay he is preparing for publication and from interviews in which he broke a long silence on the topic, were broadly affirmed by Pentagon and other civilian officials involved at the time. They agreed that the mission had also been slowed by conflicting visions from senior Pentagon and administration officials, civilian administrators in Baghdad and the former top commander of the military's Central Command, which carried out the invasion.
While he criticized others for decisions that led to what he called a false start, General Eaton accepted responsibility for the most visible setback in the training, when a battalion of the new Iraqi Army dissolved in April 2004 as it was sent into its first major battle. The Pentagon sent Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who had commanded the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion and early occupation, to review the program and then to take over the training mission after General Eaton completed his yearlong tour.
"Paul Eaton and his team did an extraordinary amount for the Iraqi Security Force mission," said General Petraeus, now commander of the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. "They established a solid foundation on which we were able to build as the effort was expanded very substantially and resourced at a much higher level."
General Eaton was commander of all Army infantry training at Fort Benning, Ga., when he was told on May 9, 2003 — just over a week after President Bush's "mission accomplished" speech — to hurry to Baghdad, where he was to set up and then command an organization to rebuild Iraq's military.
"I was very surprised to receive a mission so vital to our exit strategy so late," the general said. "I would have expected this to have been done well before troops crossed the line of departure. That was my first reaction: 'We're a little late here.' "
Pentagon officials initially told him that rebuilding the army was their fifth priority for Iraqi security forces, falling behind the civil defense corps, the police, border forces and guards for government buildings, power plants and oil lines.
L. Paul Bremer III, chief of the occupation government, insisted that police training not fall under the military, but under his civil administration. Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who planned and carried out the invasion of Iraq, made sure that retraining and managing the Iraqi armed forces would not burden his war-fighting headquarters at Central Command, and insisted that the task be managed by a separate unit with its own staff and budget, General Eaton said.
Some major allies, alienated by American policies, also refused to contribute experienced military personnel, General Eaton said. In particular, Germany and France, which have taken part in rebuilding Afghanistan's military after the war in that country, declined to assist in Iraq to show their disagreement with the invasion.
"We set out to man, train and equip an army for a country of 25 million — with six men," General Eaton said. He worked into the autumn with "a revolving door of individual loaned talent that would spend between two weeks and two months," he said, and never received even half the 250 professional staff members he had been promised.
The general's broad assessment of the problems he confronted was seconded by Walter B. Slocombe, sent by the Bush administration to Baghdad for six months to serve as the senior civilian adviser on national security and defense.
Mr. Slocombe, an under secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, said: "I have to agree with General Eaton, that it was hard to get the resources we needed out there. There was not a broad enough sense of urgency in Washington."
General Eaton said his small staff "thought we were going to build an army in a benign environment, that we were going to be able to incubate this army." The rise of a tenacious insurgency ultimately killed that hope, but at the start of his tour, the main problem was not the insurgency, which had not yet emerged in full force; it was the chaos that followed the invasion.
He arrived as looting swept Iraq, causing a bitter debate in Washington that focused on whether more American troops should have been committed to the occupation. He had to rebuild bases and barracks that had been stripped bare by looters.
Although the Iraqi Army had dissolved during the American-led invasion, the decision by Mr. Bremer and the Pentagon not to preserve or recall any complete Iraqi units meant the training task was bigger than expected.
It also left General Eaton without any Iraqi noncommissioned officers. Training an army without noncommissioned officers to serve as drill sergeants is like pitching a tent without poles.
He also found that a civilian contractor hired to conduct training would be incapable of imparting military skills and discipline — what he called "soldierization."
In a Sept. 5, 2003, briefing in Baghdad for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, General Eaton proposed speeding up the program by sending former Iraqi Army officers for training at a base in Jordan, and setting up a separate academy in Iraq for training noncommissioned officers. Mr. Rumsfeld approved the plan.
Scrounging the most basic equipment for the new Iraqi military was another problem. "We were told to find anything we needed for the soldiers — boots, canteens, rucksacks, belts, beds, blankets," General Eaton said. "We were directed to pull it from Iraqi sources where possible."
He said the most important accomplishments that first year were organizing the command structure, beginning construction of military bases across Iraq, setting up officer training in Jordan and the noncommissioned officer academy, and attracting troop contributions from nine nations.
But problems with the nascent security force became painfully clear when the first battalion of the new Iraqi Army ordered to fight insurgents ran away in April 2004 as it was being sent to Falluja to fight alongside allied forces against an uprising in the restive Sunni triangle west of Baghdad.
"The only serious mistake I committed was that I did not stop the employment of the Second Battalion in Falluja," General Eaton said. "This battalion had been originally recruited to defend Iraq from external enemies. And as they attempted to move over land to Falluja, they ran into a Shiite mob that fired into the trucks and cajoled these young Iraqi men for fighting with the occupier against their own citizens."
He said the Iraqis the Americans had selected "failed their leadership; they failed in contact."