U.S. mum on strength of Iraqi troops
Pentagon stops revealing number prepared to fight
Eric Rosenberg, Hearst Newspapers
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WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has stopped releasing its assessment of the number of Iraqi army units deemed capable of battling insurgents without U.S. military help.
U.S. officials had been releasing a tally every three months of Iraqi military units that were sufficiently trained to operate by themselves, without the aid of U.S. firepower, logistics or transportation.
The decision to stop making the information public came after reports showed a steady decline in the number of qualified Iraqi units. That number now is classified, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Victor Renuart, director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The fielding of independent Iraqi units, which will eventually take over from the 130,000 or so U.S. service members in Iraq, is a critical indicator of when U.S. forces can begin to pull out. President George W. Bush has said that U.S. forces will hand off increasing responsibility to the Iraqis "as more capable Iraqi police and soldiers come online."
A key measure of that capability is the Pentagon's four-tiered system for rating Iraqi units:
Level 1: Capable of conducting attacks without U.S. involvement.
Level 2: Capable of leading a fight against insurgents while being supported by U.S. troops.
Level 3: Capable of fighting side-by-side with U.S. forces.
Level 4: Least prepared to fight are "units being formed."
Last June, the Pentagon said three Iraqi battalions were ready to fight by themselves. By last fall, that number had dropped to one. By February, that number had fallen to zero, meaning there were no Iraqi units capable of taking on the insurgency without help.
When the downward trend became known, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, and other members of Congress expressed disappointment about the lack of progress.
Collins said it "contributes to a loss of public confidence in how the war is going."
The Pentagon then decided to stop releasing those reports.
Asked why the information now is classified when it had been previously made public, Peter Rodman, assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, said the figure "was always supposed to be" classified, even though military officials had routinely released it.
The Pentagon now has rolled that statistic into a larger grouping that combines Level 1 and Level 2. That combined total was 71 Iraqi battalions as of last month, each with about 800 soldiers. That's up from 53 battalions three months ago and 36 battalions at the end of last year.
The total number of Iraqi military and police personnel now in training -- including all levels of capability from novices to the well-trained -- is at 263,400, up more than 30,000 from three months ago.
A spokeswoman for Renuart, Air Force Maj. Almarah Belk, said the Pentagon stopped making the Level 1 report public because of "operational security and not letting the enemy know exactly what the Iraqi security forces' capabilities are."
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