Does this sound familiar: “as Iraqi troops stand up, U.S. troops will stand down.?” It’s what we’ve been told for some time will be the “metric” of when American troops can withdraw from Iraq. The real question is, does the administration really intend to effectuate this policy, and even if it does, is it even possible, and new information indicates that the answer to both questions seems to be no.
The fact is, the Iraqi troops aren’t “standing up,” and the best proof of that is that theb> Pentagon, which was fond of floating figures on how many Iraqi troops were trained, has suddenly decided it won’t reveal that number anymore. You’d think that, if for no other reasons than political ones, the administration and its minions would want to keep feeding us the good news about how much progress is being made in Iraq (something they complain bitterly is under-reported by the traditional media).
So what’s their reason for not reporting the number of trained Iraqis anymore? Why, according to the Pentagon, it’s because the number is CLASSIFIED. Which, of course, begs the question, if that number is classified, why was the Pentagon regularly issuing reports stating the number of trained Iraqis? Was someone violating the law by revealing classified information when these reports were released, or were they the result of on-the-fly declassification. And, why is it the administration, has routinely sent out its flacks to tout the number of trained Iraqis, as recently as GOP head Ken Mehlman’s remarkable appearance on the Daily Show if the number is classified? The answer is obvious: the Iraqis aren’t being trained in anything either like the numbers we’ve been told or, even worse, in the numbers it’s going to take for them to take over the laboring oar of providing security in Iraq, and the more apparent that becomes, the more the “we’ll stand down when they stand up” is revealed as the sham it really is, and the more “classified” that failure becomes.
The administration and, more importantly, its commanders on the ground, know the Iraqi army and police will likely never be capable, on their own, of restoring security in a country made insecure by our invasion and occupation. In his testimony before congress, General Casey, our commander in Iraq, had to admit how few Iraqi battalions were battle ready, a scenario which has gotten even worse since his testimony. Administration assertions about Iraqi training and readiness have been frequently, and credibly, debunked.
It’s not like we don’t have graphic evidence of the Iraqis’ inability or unwillingness to fight, either. Who can forget the pictures of the mass refusal of recent “trainees” to serve, evidenced by their stripping off their uniforms, en masse, following their “graduation” ceremony in Fallujah? A recent “pod” on the interactive television network Current TV also highlights this problem, as seen from the perspective of soldiers “on the ground” who have been assigned the duty of training Iraqis. In the video, entitled “Inside Iraq: Training Iraqis,” the film maker, an army lieutenant stationed in Iraq, depicts vignettes of the exasperating nature of his task, at one point telling the camera it’s going to take, in his opinion, at least five years, and possibly ten, to adequately train the Iraqi military.
All of this lends credence to the belief that there is, in fact, absolutely no interest by this administration in “standing down,” or at least not any time soon. This war has been the greatest gravy train in history for what President Eisenhower called the “military industrial complex” (read: Haliburton, et al). If there were any interest in bugging out of Iraq, would the government be building massive, permanent military bases in Iraq , or resisting any efforts to limit funding for such bases? And how about using the war as an excuse to conflate it with the threat of terrorism (i.e., “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”), as the House most recently, and dramatically, did in its election-driven resolution. Withdrawing from Iraq might also impede the revolving door that so many high level homeland security operatives have gone through to trade in their government positions for more lucrative jobs in private security consulting.
If you believe the administration has any intention of “standing down” in Iraq, then you’ll believe it intends to abide by any of the hundreds of laws the President has signified his intention of disobeying.
UPDATE:The military contractor abuse is even worse than we thought.
BIOGRAPHY:“Gadfly” is Marty Aussenberg, an attorney practicing law in his own firm in Memphis, Tennessee, who intends to keep practicing until he gets it right. He began his career in the private practice of law in Memphis after relocating from Washington, D.C., where he spent five years at the Securities and Exchange Commission as a Special Counsel and Trial Attorney in its Enforcement Division, during which time he handled or supervised the investigation and litigation of several significant cases involving insider trading, market manipulation, and management fraud. Prior to his stint at the S.E.C., he was an Assistant Attorney General with the Pennsylvania Department of Banking in Philadelphia and was the Attorney-In-Charge of Litigation for the Pennsylvania Securities Commission, where, in addition to representing that agency in numerous state trial and appellate courts, he successfully prosecuted the first case of criminal securities fraud in the state’s history.
Mr. Aussenberg’s private practice has focused primarily on investment, financial, corporate and business counseling, litigation and arbitration and regulatory proceedings. He has represented individual, institutional and governmental investors, as well as brokerage firms and individual brokers, in securities and commodities-related matters, S.E.C., NASD and state securities regulatory proceedings, and has represented parties in shareholder derivative, class action and multi-district litigation, as well as defending parties in securities, commodities, and other “white-collar” criminal cases.
Mr. Aussenberg received his J.D. degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and his B.A. degree in Honors Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Immediately following law school, he served as a Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellow with the Delaware County Legal Assistance Association in Chester, Pennsylvania.
He is admitted to practice in Tennessee, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia, before the United States Supreme Court, the Third and Sixth Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the United States Tax Court, as well as federal district courts in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. He has served as an arbitrator for the NASD, New York Stock Exchange and American Arbitration Association, has published several articles on stockbroker fraud, and has been a featured speaker at seminars in the United States and Canada.
Mr. Aussenberg is an avid golfer whose only handicap is his game, an occasional trap shooter whose best competitive score was a 92, and an even less frequent jazz drummer.
Cross-posted at The Memphis Flyer.
