by James Glaser
August 23, 2005

Just today George Bush was saying again, "When the Iraqis can stand up, American troops can stand down." He was talking about how we are training Iraqis to protect their own country, from other Iraqis. Most of the insurgency in Iraq is made up of Iraqi citizens. Yes, there are foreign fighters there, those who answered Bush's call to 'being it on," but most of the people fighting us, and the "new Iraqi army" are other Iraqis. You might say that we have created a civil war there.

Well, here we are trying to teach one group of Iraqis how to kill another group of Iraqis. I suppose we are teaching them how to shoot, how to drive trucks and tanks, how to use night vision equipment, all in all, we are teaching them how to be an army. We did the same thing in Vietnam with the South Vietnamese Army.

Now we are finding out that we are teaching them more than most Americans might think we should. The Guardian newspaper from Britain reports, "Millions embezzled at Iraqi Ministry."

Now who would be better to teach the Iraqis how to steal money, waste money, or just out and out lose money, than our Pentagon?

"British officials are seriously concerned about the level of corruption in the Iraqi defence ministry, after the embezzlement of vast amounts of money earmarked for the country's security forces."

Now there is a report about what has happened after the transfer of sovereignty from the US led occupation to caretaker Iraqi authorities on June 28, 2004.

It didn't take the Iraqis long to pick up on how to grab some of the money that was to be spent on the Army. Here in America the Pentagon is famous for waste and fraud. Washington is unable to find where tens of billions of dollars have gone after the military gets their hands on it. Remember the $600 toilet seats and the $200 hammers?

It seems that the Iraqi Army is a quick study in some areas, but slow in others. The Pentagon is working on a plan for our troops to stay in Iraq for at least another four years.

Maybe if we spent more time on teaching tactics, and less time on how to transfer funds, we could get our troops home sooner.

Right today we are teaching one group of Iraqis how to kill another group of Iraqis. When "our group" gets good enough at killing, George says our troops can come home. Then without our help, the New Iraqi Army will be able to kill Iraqi citizens, just as well as the Old Iraqi Army could.