What we are doing militarily in  Iraq is largely about the restoration of law and order.   It should be obvious to anyone that Saddam's army and police force had to be disbanded. Dictators always go to great lengths to  assure that their military and police force is loyal to them.

To retain such forces in power once Saddam was removed from power would have been foolish. They would have done all they could to sabotage our efforts. On the other hand, there was no other trained police or military force available.   The  best of a bad situation was to accept the chaos and  lawlessness sure to ensue until we can organize and train a native police force and military. Iraq will not be secure until there are enough Iraqi police and military  to do the task of ensuring the personal safety of Iraqi citizens.

Building an Army and Police Force from scratch is hard and a very time consuming task . But we had to do it in Iraq.

 What  takes time is training people to command tens of thousands of troops and police officers.. How many years does it take a West Point Graduate to learn enough to be general or even a colonel for that matter? Our West Point officers start out after 4 years of college training as a second  lieutenant. They then move up one step at a time over a period of nearly two decades. The left expects our military to train Iraqis in less than two years. When it takes us  nearly two decades to do it with our own people.

In Iraq we are trying to compress those decades of training and experience  into 3 years. The Democrats expect it to be done in less than two years.

Look at the problem in real terms. At first we had to train Iraqis so they could be effective privates in an  Army. That takes four months  to six months  to do in our army with our own volunteers. Then  privates had to be trained to be corporals. Their corporals had to learn to be buck sergeants, staff sergeants, master sergeants and then first sergeants. At that point Iraqi troops  can be organized into a company.  It takes  a while  to create a battalion's worth of trained enlisted men.

As each group moves up they are replaced by a larger group underneath them. The same if true of the officer corp.

Organizing a police force is a similar task. 

We are rapidly reaching the point where Iraqis can build their own enlisted and officer forces. In a year or so they will have enough good officers to staff the ranks of Major and above. They are getting experience and learning to battle terrorists.

One thing we could not do.. and that is allow Saddam's Military and Police to become the new military and police. That would have been a disaster.

The situation mandated starting from scratch. It also mandates starting with small groups and building to size. We could not train a hundred thousand privates with no commissioned and non commissioned  officers to command  them.

Once the force is past a critical mass one can break a battalion into 3 battalions with each battalion having only one third of its troops trained and that third training a new two thirds.  The trained forces train the new comers.

The Democrats reveal their ignorance when the number of combat ready battalions went down. They were asking why.  But it is the way an army grows. It divides a fully functional unit into 3 units with nearly 2/3 of the troops being untrained and untried troops. And in one fell swoop it goes  from one combat ready battalion to three battalions who are not combat ready. It does not take a lot of time until those 3 units are up to speed. When that happened the media and Democrats screamed failure. It is actually a measure of success.

It can be done again and 3 battalions can become nine.

There is also a need to get fully functional units on duty so they can gain real  experience. And it is also important to break some up active units up so they can train new troops.

It is a balancing act. But there comes a time when there are enough units ready to do the whole job. At that point the left and the media will be very surprised.

Many in congress and in the media depend on the people being ignorant of what it takes to build security forces from scratch. 

After world War II  it took us four years in Germany and six years in Japan to build new German and Japanese security forces.

It is worth noting that we lost more men in Germany when we were training their new security forces than we have lost in Iraq.  It is true. Some of Hitler's supporters were still around and they tried and did kill quite a number of our troops between 1945 and 1949.

But we did not cut and run. Had we done so we might very well have had to face a new Hitler.

We need to understand that our military is doing a great job to bring victory and our media is doing an equal quality  job of trying to bring about our defeat.