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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: US military adviser: 'We now smell bad to the Iraqi nose' (At Last A Non Delusional Military Memo) US military adviser: 'We now smell bad to the Iraqi nose' The New York Times has a report on a devastating memo written by a senior military official, although their headline might be a little misleading to some. Since it suggests that he recommend US troops should leave immediately, not in a year. Michael R. Gordon writes, "A senior American military adviser in Baghdad has concluded in an unusually blunt memo that the Iraqi forces suffer from deeply entrenched deficiencies but are now capable of protecting the Iraqi government, and that it is time “for the U.S. to declare victory and go home,” in the article entitled "U.S. Adviser’s Blunt Memo on Iraq: Time ‘to Go Home’." However, the memo written by Col. Timothy R. Reese, the Baghdad Operations Command Advisory chief, actually says, "Therefore, we should declare our intentions to withdraw all US military forces from Iraq by August 2010." More from Gordon's article: Prepared by Col. Timothy R. Reese, an adviser to the Iraqi military’s Baghdad command, the memorandum asserts that the Iraqi forces have an array of problems, including corruption, poor management and the inability to resist political pressure from Shiite political parties. For all of these problems, however, Colonel Reese argues that Iraqi forces are competent enough to hold off Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias and other internal threats to the Iraqi government. Extending the American military presence in Iraq beyond 2010, he argues, will do little to improve the Iraqis’ military performance while fueling a growing resentment. “As the old saying goes, ‘Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.’ ” Colonel Reese wrote. “Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose.” The Washington Independent adds, The Iraqi military that Reese advises comes in for a withering assessment. Although he writes that the U.S. can be “justifiably proud” that the Iraqi military has “defeated the organized insurgency,” any opportunity for bequeathing Iraq a professional military free from a “Baathist-Soviet model” is “now long past,” and U.S. forces cannot change the situation by 2011. Reese criticizes the Iraqi military for “endemic” laziness, corruption, nepotism, mistreatment of enlisted soldiers, and worse. The Iraqi Ministry of Defense and its Baghdad Operations Command are untrustworthy, incompetent and unable to “stand up to Shiite political parties,” despite “all the fawning praise we bestow” on both organizations. .... Douglas Ollivant, a former chief of plans for Multinational Division-Baghdad who left the White House last month as Iraq director, said there was “a grain of truth to the picture he paints,” but said that Reese’s account “is exaggerated, and does not account for Iraqi political reality.” Among other points, Ollivant critiqued Reese for not addressing what accelerating withdrawal “would do to our equipment withdrawal plan” or the “transition to State [Department] control.” Reese previously was the co-author of an "Army history of the service's performance in Iraq immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein [which faulted] military and civilian leaders for their planning for the war's aftermath, and [suggested] that the Pentagon's current way of using troops is breaking the Army National Guard and Army Reserve." A little over a year ago, Josh White reported for the Washington Post, "Donald P. Wright and Col. Timothy R. Reese, who authored the report along with the Army's Contemporary Operations Study Team, conclude that U.S. commanders and civilian leaders were too focused on only the military victory and lacked a realistic vision of what Iraq would look like following that triumph." "The study, 'On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign,' is an unclassified and unhindered look at U.S. Army operations in Iraq from May 2003 to January 2005," White reported." This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 11:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from
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#2. To: tom007, all (#0)
That will happen when you murder over a million of their citizens that were no threat to this country. So fuck you all. I hope none of you make it back here outside of aluminum caskets that are dumped off in Dover. Hopefully you don't even make it that far. .
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