This is not 'new' news, but it's been bothering me since I first read it. The American Conservative had in July 2006 an article by Joe Guthrie: Nation Breaking: A soldier discovers that training the Iraqi army is not President Bush’s priority.
In the beginning of GWBush's first term, Guthrie joined the National Guard and later the Army through ROTC. His father, who'd lived through the Vietnam era, had told him "I don’t believe that our government will ever allow our military to become involved in a war like Vietnam again. The American people would not stand for it."
Guthrie was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 2002 and, as a newlywed, deployed to Iraq in 2004. He'd had more Arabic language and culture training than any other soldier in his battalion and had hopes of "making a difference".
In Mosul in the fall of 2004, lawlessness reigned. Guthrie was designated the Iraqi army liaison officer, and to begin with he believed that training the Iraqi army was important. He came to understand that this was a lie (his word).
I started out as a one-man operation that grew into a cell of 60 people who rotated in for a week to a couple of months at a time. That infusion of manpower would seem to bolster the notion that Iraqi training was a priority. In reality, our leadership sent soldiers with suicidal tendencies, weight problems, and disillusionment.
Guthrie felt isolated, did not have the authority he needed to deal with situations which arose in his meetings with the Iraqi colonel, and his battalion commander refused to meet with the Iraqi colonel.
Training instructions were never uniformly approved nor implemented. Iraqis were given units of training which had already been covered. There was no coherence to the program, little progress and the Americans' superiors were not interested.
The Americans took headcounts and reported monthly, never more than 350 Iraqi personnel, but the Iraqi's count of 1,300 was accepted. Attempts to upgrade facilities for the housing of Iraqis failed; KBR would only service facilities for Americans and "giving money to Iraqis to fix their own infrastructure proved worthless because the money simply went into the hands of the highest-ranking Iraqi present."
Another logistical problem arose due to the Iraqi army’s masterful deception in accounting for their equipment. ... We reported in April 2005 that we had names showing which soldiers signed out AK ammunition and then returned differing ammunition. (This differing ammo was made during the time of Saddam and is readily available on the market; most of it does not work.) ... My superior officers weren’t interested.
In addition, every month the Iraqi army leadership and our cell agreed to a list of items mutually decided to be essential. However, the end of the month’s expenditures routinely included space heaters for the Iraqi army leadership’s quarters, satellite television for the officers only, and new furniture for the officers, to name just a few items. And trips down to the Iraqi army compound in the wee hours of the morning resulted in all kinds of discoveries. Sometimes I saw Iraqi soldiers sucking gas out of the tanks of the trucks to sell. Another time, I saw two Iraqi soldiers painting a tan Iraqi military truck white in an attempt to sell it on the open market. We were told to "tolerate a certain amount of graft."
In April 2005, a push began across Iraq to utilize more personnel in Iraqi army training. Guthrie was sent more soldiers
to satisfy the Bush administration’s contention that large numbers of Iraqis were being trained and large numbers of U.S. soldiers were doing the training. But we needed more officers, not soldiers, so many of the newly acquired men ended up sitting around. No one bothered to ask whether a need existed. If anyone had, we would have said that the Iraqis did not have as many people present as U.S. commanders contended and that the Iraqi soldiers supposedly coming off vacation never did so simply because they did not exist. When these problems were brought to our battalion, our integrity was questioned.
Guthrie tells of many frustrations. In the spring of 2005 he allowed the Iraqis to conduct operations independently and successfully until he was reined in by his superiors. This resulted in animosity from Iraqi officers whom he'd considered to be his friends. He'd spent months working for and achieving respect from the army and the locals. The American line companies were ordered to patrol and kick in doors unaccompanied by Iraqis, and the earned respect was shattered.
The Iraqis were still paid, but there was no longer time to train them.
U.S. Army Civil Affairs compensated Iraqi army soldiers for damages incurred by "terrorist" attacks, and Guthrie was too diligent investigating such claims. He was criticized by his superiors for using too little money.
Though force structure was problematic, training inefficient, logistical support nonexistent, and combat operations illogical, by far the most personally frustrating factor in fulfilling my assignment was the ocean of financial corruption. Our government has tolerated a systematic culture of "spend to win" that fattens the pockets of the few and accomplishes little.
<snip>
The operational budget proved to be an even worse disaster. Each month we handed over $50,000, yet no money was ever spent on tools for the mechanics, no improvements were made to the buildings, no new vehicles were ever purchased. So why did we continue to give $50,000 each month? The Iraqi army officers would not perform for anything less. We were bribing them to keep up the appearance of a workable fighting force.
When Guthrie's cell's replacement arrived in June 2005, they were a motley and unprepared group from two different Special Forces teams and several desk jockeys. They were underequipped and had no knowledge of their destination. "Nobody has told us anything," they said.
Joe Guthrie returned home in the fall and was honorably discharged in December 2005. He is disillusioned -- and so am I.
The goal is apparently not to help the Iraqi army to stand up so that we can stand down. Guthrie asks if the entire training program is just a ploy to prolong a state of perpetual war. He feels that the administration refuses to level with the soldiers fighting its war and wonders, since his reports and complaints were unwanted, if the higher command really knows what is going on.
We shouldn't be surprised at any of this, but reading the details is disturbing.