...One of the most detailed assessments available in the public domain came in a report filed by Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired Army commander, who teaches international affairs at West Point and spent a week in the region last month interviewing senior American and Iraqi officers.
"We need at least two to five more years of U.S. partnership and combat backup to get the Iraqi Army ready to stand on its own," General McCaffrey wrote in a seven-page memorandum that circulated widely within the military after his return.
"The Iraqi Army is real, growing, and willing to fight," he said. But he cautioned that "they are very badly equipped, with only a few light vehicles, small arms, most with body armor and one or two uniforms. They have almost no mortars, heavy machine guns, decent communications equipment, artillery, armor" or any air cargo transport, helicopter troop carriers or strike aircraft in their own inventory.
As for the ability of the Iraqi security forces to provide indigenous combat support or service support, he wrote, "Their logistics capability is only now beginning to appear."
Maj. Gen. Thomas R. Turner II, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, is the senior American commander for security across the northern part of the country, an area where Iraqi security forces have made steady gains.
In assessing the ability of the Iraqi military to take over the security mission, he said, "The major inhibitor to independent operations is lack of equipment, manpower, their inability to sustain themselves and a lack of systems or policies in place to manage the organization."
other than the above they'e doing just fine
btw it doesn't take a genius to read between the lines. They're not being given sophisticated weapons because the US military doesn't trust the Iraqi security forces not to give the weapons to insurgents or sectarian militias
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