Half Truths and False Hopes

by James Glaser
October 21, 2004

About the only hope Washington has put out there for people wanting our troops to come home from Iraq, is that we are supposed to be training Iraqis to take over control of their own country.

President Bush claimed in the last debate that we already had something like a 100.000 Iraqis trained and many more would be trained be the end of the year. John Kerry talked about his plan of training them faster. Well neither man was really talking about the truth.

No matter what we do, we will not be able to train an effective fighting force for Iraq this year and maybe not for several years.

You don't just go in there and train a new army in a matter of weeks or even months. Just this month, it was reported that over 300 Iraqi soldiers who have gone through our training, abandoned their unit after they were deployed to Samarra earlier this month. Samarra was the militant controlled city we tried with some success to take.

Also this year in both Fallujah and Baghdad's Sadr City, American trained Iraqis not only deserted, they went to the other side. Even though Iraqis are deserting by the hundreds, Washington keeps telling us that the Iraqi troops perform well in combat, but it is still our troops who lead the assaults and our troops who take the major casualties.

Many of the Iraqi fighters who are fighting us are trained Iraqi Army veterans, others are terrorists from around the world who have had some training. There are suicide bombers who only need to kill themselves taking as many as they can with them.

To defeat this opposition with Iraqis we train will take some doing and months of real training. It is reported that some of these new recruits only have a few weeks of training before we say they are ready. Remember, there are no veterans in this new army, they are all new to our tactics.

George Bush and John Kerry talk like these recruits will be taking over in no time and that is not going to happen. Neither man is being honest with the American people. They are holding out false hope, to get your vote this election. If we want to "win" in Iraq, we can plan to be there for a long time to come.


Post Script: You and I are Second Class Citizens, compared to Congress and the Government.

While you and I have to stand in line if we are lucky to get a flue shot, the US Capital's attending physician has decided that all 535 Senators and Representatives are to get the vaccine even if they are young and healthy. This also includes all the employees who work for Congress. Some workers have voluntarily refused the shots, but people of all ages who work in the Capitol can get a shot by saying they meet the guidelines, with no further questions asked.


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