Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Hopefully this is a sign of abandoning the fake-state mentality.

Except that what she's reporting really doesn't support that we are abandoning training. Just because we've increased the priority in other operational areas, doesn't mean we are using less resources for training.

No change has been announced, and a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Gary Keck, said training Iraqis remains important. "We are just adding another leg to our mission," Keck said, referring to the greater U.S. role in establishing security that new troops arriving in Iraq will undertake.

...

Pentagon officials said they know of no new training resources that have been included in U.S. plans to dispatch 28,000 additional troops to Iraq.

....

Pittard oversees the embedded military transition teams that work with the Iraqi security forces until the units become self-reliant. About 500 11-person teams are embedded in the Iraqi forces at the battalion level and up.

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Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who's in charge of training Iraqi troops, said in February that he hoped that Iraqi troops would be able to lead by December. "At the tactical level, I do believe by the end of the year, the conditions should be set that they are increasingly taking responsibility for the combat operations," Dempsey told NBC News.

For an alternative view of this article, you might read this analysis...

http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=5844

Completely agree Indy. The 'surge' by implication is about getting more men in the field providing, not in training camps. And if you see what Gen. Patraeus is doing in Baghdad, he has mixed Iraqi-American squads. Like first time cops in the field, the General is assigning Traning Officers. None of this speaks of abandoning of training the Iraqis.