Well perhaps you are right about giving them something to do but the article said "professional soldiers". The fact is most of them didn't want to be in the army to begin with and left on their own accord.
And the officers were the slime of the Baath party for the most part, There is no way of knowing if keeping the army would have made one iota of difference. All this is a exercise in second guessing and revisionism.........
I wonder how many war crimes these professional officers have committed over the years?
A professional military doesn't surrender to CNN reporters.
This is just not an accurate statement - The fact is there are correct principles that need (and can) be applied to help either fight an insurgency or help to stop one from occurring.
Many of these same people we through out (and caused ill will with) who were part of the Iraqi Army we have since brought back in to the new Iraqi Army...only we did this 6,8, 12 months later and asked them to do what they could have been doing from the very beginning.
Another principle that was broke was the notion that higher-ups (way away from the actual battle field) know better then the operators working in Country (many of these operators mind you, who were working in Iraq prior to the actual war beginning). Those operators knew more about the actualities on the ground then those higher-ups could dream of.
Duffawitz didn't have a clue what he was talking about yet he was pushing policy down the military's throat! (bad move!).
This is just not an accurate statement - The fact is there are correct principles that need (and can) be applied to help either fight an insurgency or help to stop one from occurring.
Many of these same people we through out (and caused ill will with) who were part of the Iraqi Army we have since brought back in to the new Iraqi Army...only we did this 6,8, 12 months later and asked them to do what they could have been doing from the very beginning.
Another principle that was broke was the notion that higher-ups (way away from the actual battle field) know better then the operators working in Country (many of these operators mind you, who were working in Iraq prior to the actual war beginning). Those operators knew more about the actualities on the ground then those higher-ups could dream of.
Duffawitz didn't have a clue what he was talking about yet he was pushing policy down the military's throat! (bad move!).
Here we are in agreement (at least in terms of them being classified as "professional soldiers" as most were not very professionally trained. At the same time a very high number definitely were. Don't mistake our success with the notion that the Iraqi Army must have been horrible. That is not the case. Our military was just that effective!!
I would also suggest that many didn't mind being in the Iraqi Army...per say (they liked the pay $$) what they didn't like was the notion of fighting Saddam's wars (two separate things there and we could have used that much more to our advantage).