Iraqi soldiers are in fact not trainable in the sense that the American Army is trainable. A major problem in addition to the criminal element and infiltration by al Qaeda and others, is that there's internecine strife so intense it may already be in civil war. In fact, there really is no such thing as an "Iraqi people". What unites Iraqis ironically is hatred of Americans. In the almost three years this war has been going on, there might be something like three divisions of an Iraqi Army in all of Iraq that have any effectiveness at all. From what I've read, there's general agreement that once the Americans pull out, American casualties will end, but the violence will go up. Murtha supports immediate withdrawal because, he says, in addition to this war being unwinnable, if anything happens in Iran or North Korea or elsewhere, our military is tied up in Iraq doing fourth and fifth rotations. We can't count on air power. Not only was it ineffective in Vietnam, in th e current war over 500,000 *tons* of bombs have been dropped on Iraq by one wing of the military alone, and the situation has only gotten worse. We're spinning our wheels in Iraq sinking deeper and deeper. If asking mafia type gang members to do what the military can't do isn't bespeaking impotence and unwinnability, then what is? ----- Original Message ----- From: To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: 12/25/2005 9:45:13 PM Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: A Question REALLY Answered In a message dated 12/23/2005 1:43:55 P.M. Central Standard Time, andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx writes: He also talked with US military who are training the Iraqi. They say the Iraqi are completely incapable of basic soldier skills. Hi, Why would this be? I mean--this sort of statement simply perpetuates the viewpoint of the Iraqis as incapable children who cannot rule or protect themselves, their children, etc. etc. And, I find it rather difficult to believe--but maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe they have not evolved as well as the ones here who play video games? Or, maybe they need glasses--kind of hard to hit targets if you cannot see, after all. Or, is it that we have subcontracted out the training to private companies? (I'm still one of the rare individuals who is not convinced that subcontracting out to private corps is always the best way to go...I still find it slightly appalling that we have subcontracted much of our military expertise...but that is for a different thread) Thinking we need to send a bunch of Xboxes, Gamecubes and Playstation 1s and 2s to the Iraqi soldiers to at least get them up to the speed of a 12 year old, Catching up with threads in Missouri Marlena