While the infantry is strong enough, Iraq needs viable artillery units, armored divisions, air force support and more reliable battlefield equipment, the officers said, plus the training all that requires. The soldiers and officers are for the most part zealously patriotic, but their zeal is tempered by the knowledge that they are the ones who may face the armies of neighboring countries, like Iran, after American combat forces withdraw.
“It is 2008,” said Lt. Col. Muhammad Najim Khairi, a young officer in the Third Battalion of the Iraqi Army’s 19th Brigade. “We are too many years behind other countries. We need the coalition forces until 2015.”
They know, too, however, that a decision about troop withdrawal could probably be made not by the military but by politicians in Baghdad or Washington, representing the wishes of voters impatient with the alliesÂ’ presence. Already there has been talk from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama, of a withdrawal of American combat troops by 2010. |