Wednesday - May 09, 2007

Surge Report

I know most of you out there reading this stupid blog are like me and served in some branch of the US military. Some of you even managed to stick around and endure the horse-shit for 20-30 years before being released on good behavior with a pat on the back, a somewhat decent pension and a Pavlovian response every time you see a US flag. Yeah, I know. Been there, done that.

Today we are gathered here in the ready room to review the current SITREP in Iraq. I will turn this cluster-f**k over to Lt. General Martin E. Dempsey in just a few minutes but first I want to emphasize a few key points before the good General enlightens you. It is our hope that some of this intel may escape this room and find its way to the manure pile offices of Congress who have no clue how armies work but somehow manage to think of themselves as experts ... in much the same way pigs consider themselves experts on pork chops.

Now ... think back to when you working men and women (that does not include any of you former officers out there so STFU and sit down). When you first arrived at boot camp there were a group of hideous monsters awaiting you there who were quite prepared to hate your very guts before they even laid eyes on you and for several weeks and months they proved it over and over again with physical and mental torture that the Marquis De Sade never envisioned.

Then you finally escaped and started doing a regular 9 to 5 job (well, actually it turned out to be 5 to 9 but who’s quibbling - they only guaranteed you four hours of sleep a day so quityerbitchin’). Day in and day out these monsters dogged your every step, patted you on the back when you least expected it and kicked your ass with regularity. They kept you moving and motivated. They kept you alive. Most of the time you hated them back but you gradually learned how to deal with them and even get along with them, or at the very least to stay under their radar.

Eventually, you became one of them. Shit happens, don’t it?

What monsters am I talking about? These monsters are what every successful military force that ever existed has in common from Sargon IV to Alcibiades to Leonidas to Caesar to Charlemagne to Napoleon to Wellington to Washington to Patton. They are the Non-Comissioned Officers. That’s SERGEANT to you, maggot! Not “Sarge” and sure as hell not “Sir.” Either one will get you a butt whippin’ and or extra duty.

So what do NCO’s have to do with Iraq and the current situation? Pay attention, this is important: NCO’S ARE NOT CREATED OUT OF WHOLE CLOTH NOR ARE THEY GROWN IN TEST TUBES OR SPIT OUT OF IVY LEAGUE COLLEGES. The pure and simple fact is they have to be matured like fine wine, good cheese or cold beer. It just takes time and experience. Period.

The problem we face in Iraq is that Iraqi men are being recruited in record numbers and they are going through training. The upper echelons (read: useless officers and/or “REMF’s") are primarily leftovers from the previous regime who are handling paperwork and generally staying out of the way. Do you see a gap in that military organization? Pay attention, you there in the back row! THERE ARE NO NCO’S and there won’t be for some time! GET A FREAKIN’ CLUE!

I will now step aside and let the good General continue this briefing. Pay attention and sit up straight. YES, YOU PRIVATE!

Institutional Competence Slow, But Growing, General Says
WASHINGTON (CENTCOM) - May 7, 2007

Coalition experts have identified trouble areas in the training regimen for the Iraqi security forces but see cumulative progress overall, the top U.S. training official in Iraq said.

The Iraqi police and army are short of functioning effectively as independent institutions, Army Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the commander of Multinational Security Transition Command Iraq, told online journalists and “bloggers” in a conference call May 4. However, the Iraqi forces improve tactically from month to month, he said.

“We’ve got some things that are going pretty well at the tactical level; we’ve got some things that are going pretty well at the institutional level; and the challenge now is to kind of pull it together and plug it in” so that the system performs fluidly from top to bottom, Dempsey said. “We’re not there yet. There’s still some holes in the system,” he said. “We’ve got them, I think, pretty well identified and are moving toward it.”

In both institutions, Dempsey said, the most encouraging signs so far have come from individual units. There are always some poor performers, the general explained, though, “in every case we’ve got a group of units and leaders who are essentially acknowledging their responsibilities and their accountability in a way that simply we didn’t see a year ago.”

That sense of responsibility dissipates to an extent up the chain of command and into the logistics, communications and intelligence support areas, Dempsey said. He blamed the problem on a legacy of poor leadership tracing back to the government of Saddam Hussein. “The higher up you run in the echelons of command, the more the vulnerabilities of leadership tend to become evident,” Dempsey said.

Most of the senior leaders of the Iraqi army and police are from the old regime, he noted, and “old habits die hard.” One reason for hope, the general explained, is that the Iraqi ministers of defense and interior are keen to overcome such problems.

In addition, Dempsey said, experience on the battlefield has imparted quick lessons. He said operational planning has improved rapidly in recent months. Before “there was a tendency to dramatically oversimplify things when they would conceive of a mission,” Dempsey said of the Iraqi leadership. “There wasn’t much attention to detail. Now they appreciate the intricacies,” he said.

The benefits of that experience are paying out in the current Baghdad surge, Dempsey said. He explained that even six months ago it would have been impossible to bring 5,300 Iraqi soldiers into Baghdad from other parts of the country, but now the Iraqi army is already in its second rotation.

That the Iraqis are performing so well is exceptional considering they are graduating from their training academies into a war, Dempsey noted, but the fact that the security situation is so fluid means the needs of the force must be continuously reassessed, he said.

After studying the results of a 2006 review, Dempsey said, U.S. officials worked with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in determining the need to transition away from a short-war strategy.

“We made some assumptions in the early days about declining levels of violence and a short war,” Dempsey said. “I think that together last year we came to the kind of mutual conclusion that it could very well be that the levels of violence will be sustained and that this terror threat, this insurgent threat and the threat of sectarian violence could last in Iraq for some time.”

The challenge now before the Iraqi army, Dempsey explained, is to determine the necessary size of the force in relation to the threat. Balancing the necessary training requirements to properly build the force against the demands of war has been difficult, Dempsey said, particularly in regard to developing an appropriately sized noncommissioned officer corps.

Despite a range of military academies around Iraq, he said, “they are having a very tough time taking their aspiring or their rising leaders out of the fight.” As a result, Dempsey said, the Iraqis “find themselves to be stretched rather thin to do all the things they feel that they need to do to control their battle space.

“We know how many NCOs we need for this army; we’ve got the system in place; we’ve got the courses in place; they’ve got a good cadre in place; it’s a good curriculum; but they can’t unplug from the fight as they would like to do, and so we’re coming up a bit short there,” he said.

- More ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/09/2007 at 01:24 PM   
Filed Under: • Iraq •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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