The Redhunter

From the his opening statement:

I hope through most of your questions and answers to convince you that on some areas we're progressing very, very well, in other areas still have work to do. So the bottom line is a mixed picture.

Numbers count in this kind of war, as all of you know. Physical presence counts and the Iraqi security forces know that. They have grown in 2007 well over 100,000 in the army, air force, the navy, the police -- the national police, and most of that growth was in the period June of 2007 through December of 2007. For example, the army in 2007 grew by 60,000-plus, 42,000-plus in the last half of the year. The national police grew 8,000 in 2007, all of it in the last half of 2007. And the Iraqi police grew by about 45,000 -- a little bit less than 45,000 in 2007, 29,000 in the last half of 2007.

So the story of numbers is a pretty good picture. But numbers are necessary, but insufficient. It's quality also that we count, and there's several indicators here that are pretty significant. First, the percentage of boots on the ground in the second half of 2007 went from mid-60s to low 80s. This is a big shift in the number of people who are actually in the army, actually on the ground in their battalions in their battle space. Numbers of officers now in the aggregate is 73 percent of officer requirements are filled; 69 percent of NCOs are filled.

This is in the aggregate.

We do still have problems with distribution. In general, officers are -- too many in the lower ranks and too many in the higher ranks and not enough in between, and NCOs too many in the -- quite a few in the lower ranks but not enough in the higher ranks. But eight, nine months ago, the problem was insufficient leaders and now we're into a different problem.
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There are two areas that I watch in terms of polls. We started polling Iraqis in their attitude toward their security forces last November, and in two important areas: the question "Do you disagree with the fact that the Iraqi security forces are corrupt?" There are many more people now, over 10 percent, who are disagreeing that that's correct. So they're having more confidence in their security forces, by their own measure.

...There is, as I said, huge progress in many areas, quality and quantity. But we're not free of difficulties.

We still have to finish the growth of the counterinsurgency force. We're going to focus in 2008 on developing a self-sustaining enabler without any loss of momentum in the aviation -- excuse me -- aviation field. The national police professionalization will continue through 2008 and 2009. The Iraqi police have to integrate the Sons of Iraq or concerned local citizens, as they were called, and the minister of Interior and government of Iraq are making plans to do that.

And we have difficulty overall with leaders. While we're at 70 -- 73 percent officers, 69 percent NCOs, we still want to grow beyond that, and police officers are also something that we're lagging behind. We grew the police force, as I said, by 40,000 last year, and we're lagging behind in police officers. We're working on a plan to do that, and I'll be happy to answer your questions about that.

The issue with the Sons of Iraq is that many or most of them are Sunni, and the government is Shia dominated. Because Saddam was a Sunni and they took the opportunity to lord it over the Shiites, there is much residual animosity. So the government mistrusts the Sunnis. As a result, and several government officials (maybe Maliki, I'm not sure) have expresssed concerns about the Sons of Iraq turning into a militia force and becoming a threat to the government. The Sunnis, on the other hand, believe that they are trying to secure their own country ("isn't that what you wanted?" they ask) and will be upset if the government does not recognize them.

i think the Sunnis have the better of the argument and leading US generals, such as Lt Gen Odierno, have said likewise.

The "difficulty with leaders" bit is likewise interesting. We have faced much difficulty with cultural issues in forming the new Iraqi security forces. On the one hand a cardinal rule (stated many times in Petraeus' Counterinsurgency Field Manual: FM 3-24) is that you don't build the host nation security forces in your image. On the other hand, the Iraqis are used to getting leadership posts on personal connections alone. They're not used to being fired just because you don't do your job. This is part of Clausewitz' "friction of war".

Q Sir, it's Kristin Roberts with Reuters. I'm hoping you can speak in a little bit more detail about the logistics and maintenance problems. I know that the focus has been for a long time on developing the combat forces or the maneuver forces. But has there been any progress in the Iraqis' ability to do their own logistics and maintenance, and what is the timeline, the time frame, for getting them up to speed?

GEN. DUBIK: Sure. Thanks Christine (sic/Kristin). Yeah, logistics, actually, is making some good progress. It will be until the end of this year until we're in a different logistics position, but you can already see here some of the changes. For example, in December the minister of defense had declared that his forces would go to self- sufficiency in life support -- food, primarily, and fuel. He's doing a very good job across the board in terms of feeding themselves, had a little bit of rocky start in December and January, but now that's pretty much smoothed out, and now he's working on the fueling issue. That will take a couple of months to get that ironed out, but that part of logistics is on track, and they're progressing. ...

I've watched many briefings and all of the commanders say the same thing; that the Iraqi security forces are making tremendous progress in combat capability but their logistics capabilities are lagging. Much of this, from what I can tell, is that the Iraqis are bad at bureaucracy and everything gets bogged down. You also have corruption and sectarian favoritism.

Q Sir, this is Joe Tabet with Al Hurra. Talking about the increase in numbers in the police and the army, what's the current size in terms of number of the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army? And what are your goals that you are looking to reach, you and the Iraqi government?

GEN. DUBIK: The Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior have set for themselves somewhere around 600,000 aggregate military and police as the force that would be large enough to maintain security in the country. And so that's where they're aiming, and they think that they should get to that point sometime around 2010. Right now, or as of the end of the year, the total number of people was about 531,000 -- 180(,000)-some in the military, 200(,000) and -- or, correction, 340,(000)-some in the police forces, and about 3,000 in the special operations forces. And they are on a growth path where they can sustain this size of force, both with money and with equipment.

You will know that in 2006, the government of Iraq has began paying more for their security forces than the Iraqi Security Force Fund contains. That trend continued in 2007 and again in 2008. So they're very cognizant of the size of force they believe they need, and they're very cognizant of the fact that they've got to spend -- put money in their budget to maintain this size of force.

Overall the general paints a pretty positive picture. No doubt he left out many of the problems and this time I'm disappointed that the questions weren't tougher. But then maybe there just wasn't much to criticize. All in all what he said was in line with much else that I've been reading. We're all disappointed that the whole thing is taking so much longer than was anticipated (all wars seem to) but I think this report shows that we are making progress and if current trends continue we can defeat the insurgency.