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Add to that the fact that Americans have never known anything but Freedom, and we act like it, we can make decisions naturally and normally they are just now tasting that Freedom and they still have a decision process far different than ours ie "if I do this will I lose my head?"

It always amazed the Soviet Senior Officers that came to visit our Military, in my case (don't remember if it was USS Ranger or USS Kittyhawk) the visiting Admiral was floored when he learned that the average age (5,000 people) was 19 and when he saw these young Sailors towing around aircraft and handling missiles etc etc unsupervised he just couldn't believe his eyes.

Our spirit of Independence (Individuality) makes us the equivalent of 2 or more highly supervised troops and we come by it very naturally and we can train those less experienced at the same time to replace us as we progress in experience. That just isn't normal behavior for a person that has been repressed his/her entire life.

Bottom line we will be in Iraq for awhile.

"Bottom line we will be in Iraq for awhile."

I agree. Realisticaly, getting the Iraqi Security Forces to be able to go head-to-head with the insurgents on a regular basis without our support, or with minimal support, will take 4-6 years.

I heard recently that our military finally convinced the Iraqi interim government to let former, mid-level, Iraqi Army officers and NCOs to apply for the new security forces (after proper vetting). These guys are needed in order to accelerate the training pace.