Over 50 hostages at security company in Iraq

[longhorngunman]

Thanks for the insight . That post about us destabilizing the ME just kills me! Yeah, the ME was just a bastion of law and order before we took out the tyrant Saddam.

 

[Standing Wolf]

Why does it take 13 weeks to make a U.S. Marine and a seemingly infinite amount of time to train an Iraqi military force? When we honestly answer that question, we'll realize what we're up against.

Land wars in Asia have a habit of including all manner of ugly surprises.

 

[goalie]

Well, maybe the Shiites are still a little pissed off about the wives and daughters raped under the Sunnis. The sons and fathers murdered under the Sunnis. You know, all that stuff that happened for 20+ years.

Then, when the Shiites bombed a major Sunni mosque, the Shiites finally said "f*ck it," decided that payback is a medivac, and started going to town on the minority group that was so oppressive when in power over them.

Me, I'd rather see Shiites killing Sunnis than either of them killing US troops. That's just me though.

 

[KriegHund]

Seems like if things were going to fall apart from tribal issues it would have happened in the first 6 months not several years after the invasion.

 

[Firethorn]

Why does it take 13 weeks to make a U.S. Marine and a seemingly infinite amount of time to train an Iraqi military force? When we honestly answer that question, we'll realize what we're up against.

It takes 13 weeks to make a barely qualified Marine, who's the lowest of the low, but comes with a high school graduation. Generally speaking, they get even more training before deploying.

As for Iraqi military force, it's not just the 'grunts' that you have to train. It's the leaders. A good NCO takes something like 5 years, minimum. A General? 15-20.

We're also limited in that we're training an entire country's force from pretty much scratch, to include police. We don't have the trainers to train them all in parallel, so we have to do it serially. Then you figure that we have to 'train the trainers' so they can maintain training levels.

Give it another year or two, and we should be able to pull our forces back to the 'advisor' stage.

 

[seeker_two]

Two problems from the get-go...

1. Our forces may have damaged the Iraqi/Muslim capability to fight, but we haven't destroyed their WILL to fight. Until we do that, this kind of guerilla warfare will continue.

2. Bush is trying to force three separate political entities (Shiites, Sunnis, & Kurds) into one nation against their will (and, in the case of the Kurds, breaking our promise). It will be another Yugoslavia--only continuous occupation by a superpower will keep it together. Best to break it up into three separate nations now...

 

[R.H. Lee]

Best to break it up into three separate nations now...

That's really been the answer all along. Give the Shiites a piece, the Sunnis a piece and the Kurds a piece. Call it a victory and come home.

 

[Lobotomy Boy]

It seems to me that a security company in Iraq would be better prepared to defend itself from attack. Considering that a war is still in progress and that guerilla warfare is the battle du jour, I would expect better security from a security company. I didn't read about any armed resistance.

Being a security contractor in Iraq is a tough gig. Most of them are pretty well prepared and trained. They must have been overwhelmed. I hope they will be all right.

 

[ceetee]

The Germany analogies are fundementally flawed. The German people knew what it was like to have some semblance of freedom, and the majority of them wanted it back. The Iraq people do not know freedom nor do they want any part of it. They are just waiting for us to leave so that they can put themselves back into the comforting embrace of their shackles.

Not only that, but Germany had soundly deserved the drubbing they got from the Allies. I may be mis-informed, but as far as I know, Iraq hadn't formed an alliance with two other countries with the express purpose of ruling the world. Neither had Iraq built giant concentration camps for the sole purpose of taking care of "the Jewish Problem". Neither had they attacked any of our allies, anywhere...