"BATTLE OF BASRA" PROVES IRAQI ARMY CAN'T HANDLE SECURITY

President Bush and Republicans like Sen. Lindsay Graham were all over TV, especially the Bush White House "darling" FOX NEWS, singing the praises of the Iraqi Army, but upon a closer examination the "Battle for Basra" proved the Iraqi Army is not up to the task of handling security in Iraq.

The United States military had to be called in when the Iraqi Army floundered against the Mehadi Army.

There were also reports last week that many members of Iraq Army were surrendering rather than fight. Forty Iraqi Army fighters surrendered at one time when the battle heated up.

The poor showing of the Iraq Army is an ominous sign for the United States military and especially Gen. David Petraeus who travel to the United States next week to meet with President Bush and give a status report to Congress.

The fact the Iraqi Army couldn't handle a security crackdown in Basra means the United States military could be in Iraq for an even longer time than anyone ever anticipated.

Editorial comment by BILL CORCORAN, editor of CORKSPHERE.

Clashes highlight Iraq army’s woes

Self-sufficiency as distant as ever in war’s 6th year; 2008 dropped as target
By Charles J. Hanley

AP Special Correspondent
The Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23864495/

Iraq’s new army is “developing steadily,” with “strong Iraqi leaders out front,” the chief U.S. trainer assured the American people.

That was three-plus years ago, the U.S. Army general was David H. Petraeus, and some of those Iraqi officials at the time were busy embezzling more than $1 billion allotted for the new army’s weapons, according to investigators.

The 2004-05 Defense Ministry scandal was just one in an unending series of setbacks in the five-year struggle to “stand up” an Iraqi military and allow hard-pressed U.S. forces to “stand down” from Iraq.

The latest discouraging episode was unfolding this weekend in bloody Basra, the southern city where Iraqi government forces — in their toughest test yet — were still struggling to gain the upper hand in a five-day-old battle with Shiite Muslim militias.

Year by year, the goal of deploying a capable, free-standing Iraqi army has seemed always to slip further into the future. In the latest shift, with Petraeus now U.S. commander in Iraq, the Pentagon’s new quarterly status report quietly drops any prediction of when homegrown units will take over security responsibility nationwide, after last year’s reports had forecast a transition in 2008.

Earlier, in January last year, President Bush said Iraqi forces would take charge in all 18 Iraqi provinces by November 2007. Four months past that deadline, they control only half the 18.
Not enough resources?Responsibility for these ever-unfulfilled goals lies in Washington, contends retired Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who preceded Petraeus as chief trainer in Iraq.
“We continue to fail to properly resource and build the very force that will enable a responsible drawdown of our forces,” Eaton told The Associated Press.

Retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, a West Point professor and frequent Iraq visitor, also sees insufficient “energy” in the U.S. effort. “Even now, there is no Iraqi air force; there’s no national military medical system; there’s no maintenance system,” he told a New York audience on March 13.

The current chief trainer counters that his Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, known as MNSTC-I, has made “huge progress in many areas, quality and quantity.”

Editorial comment: "SURE."