homicide-erumpent
Notebook

U.S. is often short-changing advisory mission

November 22nd, 2006 by Double Tap

Despite our primary mission statement in Iraq - training the Iraqi security forces so they can secure their own nation - the training and advisory teams sent to do that task are regularly undermanned, untrained, of insufficient rank and have little operational experience.

That’s not just me saying it - it’s the advisors themselves. A Washington Post article, seen here, details a study by the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. which shows serious flaws in the way the Army is conducting training and advising of IA forces.

I wasn’t an advisor, so my personal experiences are limited. However, there was a MiTT (Military Transition Team) at Q-West when I was there, who’s job it was to be an advisor group to the Iraqi Army brigade headquarters and a battalion located at that FOB. I talked with them regularly, and many of the issues outlined in the study were similiar to what I saw.

In many cases, you had a U.S. lieutenant advising an Iraqi major, or an U.S. major advising an Iraqi general. Most of the team were Reservists, and I heard one of them saying he was completely untrained for this type of work - or for the area of expertise he was supposed to be advising on. Many of the Iraqi leaders were veterans of previous wars, while the U.S. advisors were in their first combat-zone deployments.

If our primary strategy in this war is to get the Iraq Army and police forces up to speed, then we need to start doing a better job of training and advising them. That may mean pulling some of the combat vets and “hard chargers” out of the line units to serve as advisors, but that is the price we are going to have to pay.

tag Category : Uncategorized
tag Tags : ,
tag Similar Posts:

Leave a Reply

Subscribe without commenting