Veterans Not Surprised Iraq's Army Collapsed
In order to have an army, you first need a unified country.
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/24500-veterans-not-surprised-iraqs-army-collapsed
America Tonight asked three veterans who trained, advised and fought alongside the Iraqi Army about how such an enormous investment in blood and money could seemingly vanish so quickly.
“They weren’t soldiers because they wanted to be soldiers,” explained Marine First Lt. Dave Jackson, who fought with Iraqi forces during his two deployments to Iraq. “They were soldiers because they wanted a job.”
He said the decision in 2003 to dissolve Saddam Hussein’s army created a vacuum of structure and experience. Gone were its senior officer and senior enlisted corps, and he said what the army built instead never reached the level of a professional force.
“No matter how many billions of dollars you spend you cannot buy experience. You cannot buy legacy. You cannot just manufacture that out of nowhere,” Jackson said. “…They've been set up for failure from the beginning.”
“Imagine being in a country where you can't communicate with the people that you're working with, but it's your job to train them to form a cohesive army,” said Matt Pelak, who as an infantryman in 2004 took part in the monumental task of building an Iraqi Army from scratch.
The Iraqi soldiers lived with the Americans on their base. Pelak said they trained them daily in basic soldiering skills, such as how to shoot and move in formation.
“How can you accomplish that goal if you can't communicate with the people you're working with?” he said. “It seems absurd, so why not dedicate time and energy to training soldiers and making sure they can speak the language? It seems like a no-brainer to me, for some reason we didn't do it.”
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