Does anybody remember when John Kerry and John Edwards campaigned on the thesis that the Bush Administration had no plan to win the peace? Here are some selected quotes from today's Washington Post article on the new Iraqi army.
...the new army is meant to fight guerrillas rather than invade Iraq's neighbors or level Iraqi villages, U.S. officers tend to describe what they are training as a counterinsurgency force, rather than an army...
...the Iraqi army is in line this month to cross a symbolic mark: 100,000 men trained and equipped. The goal is 135,000. The Defense Ministry's call for junior officers from the old army has drawn applications from 3,769 officers, with 2,662 of them accepted, said Wellman, the U.S. spokesman...
...All 99,766 of the soldiers now in the army had to take a national oath, and U.S. and Iraqi leaders maintain a careful mix of officers at top levels. Those are among other measures to try to keep the army from being dominated by Shiites, Kurds or Sunnis. "The goal here is to make the army and eventually the police force an institution of national unity," Dempsey said...
...In Taji, Alwan, the Sunni army captain, was ready to set a timeline for significant U.S. withdrawal. "Two years," Alwan said. If the Americans pull out before that -- before the government is steady, the constitution set and the army trained -- it "means we would go to civil conflict," he said.
They're still saying it. No plan. Go figure.
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