As a veteran myself, I get regular newsletters from several different military journals including Military.com. They recently re-ran a report from the Associated Press titled "US Botched Training of Iraqis" dated January 31, 2007.
It talks about Democrats and Republicans directly challenging President Bush for botching the training job of Iraqi police and the Iraqi judicial system. Its been reported many times that the US initially did not send the right type of troops to train new Iraqi police recruits. The unfortunate soldiers tasked with the mission were not given adequate support, resources, sometimes didn't even get enough food for themselves let alone training materials, supplies or anything else for the Iraqi police.
Its no wonder that there were so many defections from the flanks of the Iraqi police force. Not only were they under attack and subject to kidnapping and everything else, but they would show up for training with the American troops that weren't prepared nor supported by their command. That very poor first impression will probably come back to haunt the US for decades.
Unfortunately, even after these problems were identified, things were never fixed. In the early days training the Iraqis was not a priority. When it became a priority it wasn't supported. When support came it came to few and too far between and much of the damage was done.
Many of the troops doing the training were the most vocal critics of the training program, asking, pleading and begging for their commanders and commander in chief to get their act together and start building the force that would one day protect Iraq, the Iraqi police. Its no surprise that the power void left by too few Americans on the ground and no trained police force enabled and 'emboldened' insurgents to gain a foot hold in Iraq.
President Bush let and encouraged insurgents to gain a foot hold in Iraq by not sending enough troops to do the job and failing to make training the Iraqi police force a priority with funding, and supplies and trainers and his leadership and oversight from the top down. His failure has been losing us the war since shortly after we won the initial victories in 2003.
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