U.S. Military Is Still Waiting For Iraqi Forces to 'Stand Up'

When asked about training of Iraqis, Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, spoke of an even longer term. "It's a generational level of work, not something that's going to be done overnight," he told PBS's Jim Lehrer last week. "And we're making good progress."

This school of thought emphasizes that "standing down" would apply only to U.S. combat forces. Even if Iraqi forces eventually stand up in the promised numbers and fight effectively, they still will need U.S. help in logistics, intelligence, maintenance and other specialized support functions for years to come, said an Army officer experienced in Iraq. He said he has heard from some comrades that providing such support may require a fairly substantial U.S. military presence in Iraq for as long as a decade more.

Some experts believe that the U.S. training program itself is flawed, lacking both funding and enough U.S. advisers and trainers. The training effort is "grossly insufficient, concentrated at battalion and brigade headquarters only," said retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who oversaw the program in 2003 and 2004. He and others believe that the effort will not really succeed until it expands to attach more advisers to smaller units, such as companies and platoons -- which Eaton said would take thousands of additional personnel.

The United States failed to send out enough really good advisers with language skills to work in the training program, added retired Marine Col. T.X. Hammes, another Iraq veteran. "Thus we train Iraqis, push them out the door and fail to support them," he said. This makes them unable to reach the real goal of providing security to Iraq, he added -- "or worse yet, due to lack of U.S. supervision, [they] become part of the problem."

Other experts say the "stand up, stand down" formula has not worked because the target number is insufficient, or because the number is the wrong measurement. The target of 325,000 trained security forces "is arguably inadequate to start with," said Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University defense specialist. Given the total population in unstable parts of Iraq and a standard ratio of population to security forces of 20 to 1, he said, "Iraq really needs 500,000 troops and police."

Alternatively, some say it is not the number of Iraqi troops that counts; it is the quality. " 'Standing up' is a far broader term than many have understood," argued Army Lt. Col. James Gavrilis, a counterinsurgency expert and a Special Forces officer who participated in the invasion of Iraq. "I don't think a lot of people in uniform understood that it would entail developing the quality and character of those forces as well as their numbers."

Finally, some specialists contend that "standing up" Iraqi soldiers and police forces may in fact be contributing to the current outburst of sectarian violence, because the police especially are not seen as impartial players.

"To the degree that 'standing up' a Shia-dominated force is perceived as a security threat to Sunnis, you get a stronger and stronger reaction the more you stand up," said Frank Hoffman, a strategic expert and retired Marine officer. "This may account for what you are seeing -- the sense that national institutions that do not reflect political concerns will produce more violent reactions and a greater reliance on local militias."

A Marine officer who has fought in Anbar province and an Army captain who just returned from Baghdad agreed, both saying they fear that all the U.S. military is doing is training and arming Iraqis to fight a looming civil war.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.