Slow going in training troops

Bush administration strategy in Iraq centers on training Iraqi troops to eventually take over against the insurgency and allow a U.S. pullout.
But when will that be?
By many recent accounts, including this one in The Washington Post, not for a long time. There’s a language barrier between U.S. soldiers and Iraqi troops, according to the article, and our troops by and large don’t respect the Iraqis, who feel caught in an impossible situation. Said one Iraqi private: “The way the situation is, we wouldn’t be ready to take responsibility for a thousand years.”
The president continues to claim progress in Iraq. But dismal polling for Bush on Iraq shows that a majority of Americans are troubled by what they see and are becoming impatient.
Posted by Randy Scholfield

One Comment

  1. dan newland
    Posted June 14, 2005 at 7:46 pm | Permalink

    Randy – I spent 369 days with the 1st Infantry in Vietnam. It seems like training and motivating Iraq troops is deja vu with the South Vietnamese. Will we ever learn? Or 10 years from now will we have a monument in Washington for fifty some thousand names of servicemen killed in the middle east? And Halliburton still won’t have control of the 2nd largest known reserves in the world ! Take a poll Randy – how many dead servicemen are we willing to sacrifice in Iraq? How many would we be willing to sacrifice going after Bin Laden in Pakistan? A few more I suspect.