Troop Numbers

At the press conference with Allawi, the President said "Nearly 100,000 fully trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers, and other security personnel are working today."

100,000? Fully trained and equipped? When did that happen?, I thought. Sadly, it hasn't.

"of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. Another 46,176 are listed as "untrained," and it will be July 2006 before the administration reaches its new goal of a 135,000-strong, fully trained police force.

Six Army battalions have had "initial training," while 57 National Guard battalions, 896 soldiers in each, are still being recruited or "awaiting equipment." Just eight Guard battalions have reached "initial (operating) capability," and the Pentagon acknowledged the Guard's performance has been "uneven."

Training has yet to begin for the 4,800-man civil intervention force, which will help counter a deadly insurgency. And none of the 18,000 border enforcement guards have received any centralized training to date, despite earlier claims they had, according to Democrats on the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee.

They estimated that 22,700 Iraqi personnel have received enough basic training to make them "minimally effective at their tasks," in contrast to the 100,000 figure cited by Bush."

"Let me tell you exactly what the story is. They're saying they're trying to train them, yet they have not trained," Sen. Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on CNN.-Reuters

So, not only aren't there 100,000 fully trained and equipped, there aren't even a quarter of that number minimally trained and equipped.

And one of them is this guy:

The US military announced yesterday that it had arrested a top Iraqi National Guard commander in Tikrit, accusing him of working with the insurgency. It was the most serious publicized confirmation so far that the growing resistance movement, which US officials admitted yesterday is fanning out from bases in Fallujah and Baghdad, has infiltrated the top echelons of Iraq's new security forces.

Gee. No wonder the Brits are declaring success and going home.

The cuts will occur in the combat elements of the deployment - the 5,000-strong infantry and armoured brigade that is committed to the provinces of Basra and Maysan. Four Royal Navy ships will remain in the Gulf.

Freedom is on the march!