| Hat tip Don Surber. |
That last point - their ability to deploy - is a sure sign that Iraqi army units are improving. "Battalions disintegrated last year when we tried to move them around. Now we have them ready to move," says Major General William Caldwell, top commander in Iraq. "That was not even possible six months ago," Dempsey points out.
| "We've run numerous command and control exercises - the ministers themselves participate. Now they appreciate the details." |
Despite these improvements, leadership remains a major failing for Iraqi forces - both at the national level and at the level of non-commissioned officers on the battlefield. Iraq's highest military leaders, including government ministers, and police and army officers still need babysitting by U.S. and other coalition mentors. "The higher up in echelons in command you go, the more vulnerabilities in leadership become evident," Dempsey says. "Most of the senior leaders are from old regime - and old habits die hard," he adds. "There was a tendency to dramatically oversimplify things not much attention to detail."
That's a problem Dempsey is working hard to remedy. "We've run numerous command and control exercises - the ministers [of the Interior and Defense Departments] themselves participate. Now they appreciate the details."
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Daniel Speckhard says that ongoing "surge" operations in Baghdad have forced the ministers to learn quickly. In the past, he says, ministry leaders focused solely on strictly military solutions to security problems. That's changing: recently the government formed defense planning committees focused on using diplomacy, reconstruction and other "soft power" functions to resolve conflict. Still, Speckhard is skeptical. "It's too early to draw conclusions that there are encouraging signs" of long-term improvement.
Plus, the relentless demands of day-to-day combat have prevented the slow, steady training necessary to build up an experienced NCO corps, according to Dempsey. "They would like to have a U.S.-style NCO corps, but they realize it's a long way off."
The Iraqi army NCO Corps is growing, but there is a shortage of NCOs in the training establishment because every soldier is needed at the front - and this has a detrimental effect on the security force's ability to sustain improvements in training and development. Dempsey says the coalition's plan for training Iraqi NCOs is evolving to ensure that enough non-coms remain in the training base.
(KUNA) -- US forces were keeping tracking Muqtada Al-Sadr and believed he was in Iran, a US general said on Wednesday, yet he declined to state whether the Shiite cleric was a wanted man. As for the previous 24 hours, Sadr was not in Iraq, as all indications affirm that he was still in Iran, Major 
A senior figure in al-Qaeda in Iraq armed group was arrested on Monday northeast of Baghdad, the official spokesman of the law-imposing security plan said. "
(KUNA) -- Senior officials denied on Monday reports alleging that the chief of Al-Qaeda in Al-Rafidain 
At least 37 people died in bombings and shootings in the Iraqi capital on Sunday a day after a massive blast tore through a Baghdad market, killing 135 people in the second worst attack since the March 2003 invasion. The US military, meanwhile, revealed that four helicopters, which crashed in the past two weeks, were shot down by rebels, killing 20 people in all. 
US and Iraqi forces have killed or captured at least 7,000 Al-Qaeda fighters in the past two years, with 30 "senior leaders' taken out of action since July. The news comes hard on the heels of a leaked US Marine report that states US forces cannot defeat the Al-Qaeda-led insurgency in the vast western desert province of Al-Anbar. 
BAGHDAD - An alleged Al-Qaeda militant suspected of bombing the office of President Jalal Talabanis party in northern Iraq has been arrested near the oil hub of Kirkuk, the US military said.