"I was very surprised to receive a mission so vital to our exit
strategy so late," Eaton 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."
"We set out to man, train and equip an army for a country of 25
million - with six men," Eaton said. He worked into the autumn with "a
revolving door of individual loaned talent that would spend between
two weeks and two months," and never received even half the 250
professional staff members he had been promised."
Eaton's broad assessment of the problems he confronted was seconded by
Walter Slocombe, sent by the Bush administration to Baghdad for six
months to serve as the senior civilian adviser on national security
and defense.
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."



Problem was, CICBush43, Cheney and the Bushworld gang were delusional.
 Since the two top guys had never spent a day in a combat zone, they
had no concept of what it meant to not just invade a nation, defeat
its army and subjugate its people, but then have to OCCUPY and RUN the
nation while at the same time abolishing ALL of its political,
governmental and military infrastructures.  Thus our chickenhawk
leader sent no forces skilled in either local pacification and control
or nationbuilding, other than Bremer's feeble Green Zone crew and a
scattering of folks like Eaton, to actually replace the abolished
infrastructures. Without local civil and political direction, chaos
resulted everywhere. Criminal gangs rampant. Embryonic insurgent
groups free to loot unguarded Iraqi ammo dumps of  arms, ammunition
and the makings of IEDs (that kill at least half of all U.S.
casualties) in such large quantities that the insurgent groups, now
grown huge and highly skilled, will be able to kill Americans (and
each other) efficiently in Iraq for decades with most of the
disillusioned Iraqis cheering them on.  
And that new Iraqi army?  It is finally growing now but is so
sectarian that its primary fate will be to provide the U.S. trained
and armed cadres for the Shiite and Kurd forces in the slowly arriving
civil war.  Another day in Bushworld...

David Bier

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/10/news/army.php

  General faults U.S. on Iraqi military

By Thom Shanker The New York Times

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2006

WASHINGTON 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 U.S. soldiers was hobbled from
its belated start by poor pre-war planning and insufficient staff and
equipment.

The account of Major General Paul Eaton, who retired on Jan. 1 after
33 years in the U.S. Army, suggests that commanders in Iraq might by
now have been much closer to President George W. Bush's goal of
withdrawing American forces if they had not lost much of the first
year's chance to begin building a capable force.

Eaton's views, drawn from an essay he is preparing for publication and
from interviews in which he spoke out publicly for the first time,
were broadly affirmed by Pentagon and other civilian officials
involved at the time. They agreed that the mission also was 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," 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.

After that embarrassment, which Eaton said he might have headed off,
Pentagon officials sent Lieutenant General David Petraeus, who had
commanded the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion and the
early occupation, to review the program and then to take over the
training mission after Eaton completed his yearlong tour.

"Paul Eaton and his team did an extraordinary amount for the Iraqi
Security Force mission," said Petraeus, now commander of the army's
Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. "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."

Eaton was commander of all army infantry training at Fort Benning,
Georgia, when he was told on May 9, 2003 - just over a week after
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," Eaton 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 Eaton that rebuilding the army was
their fifth priority for Iraqi security forces, falling behind the
civil defense corps, police, border forces and guards for government
buildings, power plants and oil lines.

L. Paul Bremer, head of the occupation government, insisted that
police training fall not under the military, but under his civil
administration. And General Tommy 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 the
Central Command. He also insisted that the task be managed by a
separate unit with its own staff and budget, Eaton said.

Key allies, alienated by American policies, also refused to contribute
experienced military personnel, Eaton noted. In particular, Germany
and France, which participated in rebuilding the Afghan military after
the invasion there and the removal of the Taliban, 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," Eaton said. He worked into the autumn with "a
revolving door of individual loaned talent that would spend between
two weeks and two months," and never received even half the 250
professional staff members he had been promised.

Eaton's broad assessment of the problems he confronted was seconded by
Walter Slocombe, sent by the Bush administration to Baghdad for six
months to serve as the senior civilian adviser on national security
and defense.

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."

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.






--------------------------
Want to discuss this topic?  Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL 
PROTECTED]
--------------------------
Brooks Isoldi, editor
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

http://www.intellnet.org

  Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com
  Subscribe:    [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Unsubscribe:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has 
not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of 
The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT 
YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the 
included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of 
intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, 
techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other 
intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes 
only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material 
as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use 
this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' 
you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    [EMAIL PROTECTED]

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
 


Reply via email to