Iraqi Army - What its purpose truly is

[lazarus]

This already was posted over in Editorials, but didn't get much discussion.

But I was thinking about this earlier, and then found this story to back me up.

Seriously, does a peaceful nation need a standing army of >200,000 for internal security? No. It needs a police force.

We all wondered where Bush would get his troops for excursion into Syria and Iran. And along comes "former Pentagon official, journalist, and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb."

''If you ask any Iraqi leader, they will tell you these people can't fight. They just aren't trained. And yet we're cranking them out like rabbits." As for plans to train a 10 division Iraqi army by next year, Gelb was scathing. ''It became very apparent to me that these 10 divisions were to fight some future war against Iran. It had nothing to do, nothing to do," with taking Iraq over from the Americans and fighting the insurgents.

So there's BushCo's army. The nice thing from BushCo's perspective is, they don't even have to be trained all that well. They're cannon fodder. Our air superiority will do most of the killings. We just need these guys to absorb some bullets taking the ground when we're done bombing it.

[jody]

1. The Iraqi army will enforce control on the ground backed up by

air support provided by US forces. That way Iraqis take most of the casualties but are subservient to US military forces.

Bush can declare a victory before the campaigns start for 2006 and maybe Repugs can retain control of both houses.

[Niccolo_Macchiavelli]

2. ummm yes that will work out quite well i'm assured

the iraqi army, which is not infiltrated by resistance agents and perhaps fought alongside with shias from iraq (if not beeing oneself), badr militia brigades against US forces.

the pictures of the defecting ires in braveheart movie come to my mind.

Attack them from the air and send reinforcements on the ground...could get interesting.

[jimshoes]

3. Seeing as how our Iraq adventure is

going so well, an Iran air campaign with a ground invasion using untrained Iraqi soldiers has all the earmarks of an unparalleled fiasco. I can't help but thinking these guys have watched "The Man Who Would Be King" once too often. The indigenous people won out in the end in the movie. I keep thinking the same thing is going to happen in the real world. (As opposed to the fantasy world bushco lives in)

[Kraklen]

4. Wouldn't work.

That'd be like building a South Vietnamese Army to invade Cambodia. It.. ahh... hmmm.