Article

2005-12-05 Iraq

Progress in training Iraq's "New Model Army"

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Posted by Mike 2005-12-05 12:25|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Duh-oh! Left out the link to the atricle from two years ago. It's here.

Posted by Mike">Mike 2005-12-05 12:38|| 2005-12-05 12:38|| Front Page Top

#2 Sounds like a good investment for the Iraqi government to make would be a third installation modeled after the DLI (Defense Language Institute).

Its basic course would be literacy, which is known to radically improve morale among those who were previously illiterate.

Its intermediate course would be foreign language, primarily English. They would probably also want to study French, Iranian, and who knows what all else. But those who completed such training would be on the promotion fast track.

The advanced course would be education for what amounts to a high-school GED. Soldiers who showed promise there would be on the officer track, and could be farmed out to any of the major Iraqi universities.

The best part is that none of these ideas would be strange in any way to the Iraqis, they wouldn't have to have the logic of it explained to them, and it would raise the professional quality of their military far above any other military in the region, save Israel.

Eventually, as part of the Status of Forces agreement, I hope the US and Iraq agree to conduct an annual joint maneuver, which will eventually be fully integrated into the Bright Star exercises.

It will be a sight to see the Egyptian and Iraqi armies utterly perplexed at the sight of each other perfoming the same NATO-style maneuvers and with the same discipline. The light may dawn that there's still a little hope for some Arab pride left.

Posted by Anonymoose 2005-12-05 13:32|| 2005-12-05 13:32|| Front Page Top

#3 Being able to stand up an army from scratch is an SF dream. Normally it amounts to going into a corrupt military that has removed any remaining NCO Corps and trying to fix it. Of course the officer Corps is fighting the change all the way. It is incredibly frustrating. The Iraq model is altogether different. New troops, new NCO's, and new officers allow the creation of new standards and practices without any holdovers. What most don't realize is we are building the next dominant force in the area. I would bet Israel is watching this very closely.

Posted by 49 pan">49 pan 2005-12-05 16:35|| 2005-12-05 16:35|| Front Page Top

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