Today’s Must Read

As Donald Rumsfeld famously wrote in a different context, “the harder we work, the behinder we get.” That could sum up the message given by the general formerly in charge of training Iraqi security forces to a House Armed Services Committee panel yesterday.

According to General Martin Dempsey, Iraq needs at least 50,000 more soldiers and policemen than the U.S. had previously estimated. Reports the Washington Post:

“Iraqi security forces will require growth in scope and scale similar to what we accomplished in 2007 in order to ensure sufficient force to protect the population throughout Iraq,” Dempsey said, referring to this year’s planned increase of more than 50,000 Iraqi soldiers and police. Otherwise, he said, U.S. forces will be locked into “tactical” jobs such as providing neighborhood security, and Iraqi security forces will face substantially higher risks when U.S. forces draw down.

One immediate goal, set this month by (General David) Petraeus, is to add 20,000 soldiers to the Iraqi army alone, so that each combat battalion will be filled to 120 percent of its official manpower. That number does not include tens of thousands more Iraqi soldiers who will be required to fill vacant slots in the country’s army, which has an annual attrition rate of 15 to 18 percent.

Over the past four years, U.S. officials have repeatedly upped their assessments of needed Iraqi security forces. The Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index notes that the desired end-strength of the Iraqi Army and Police by December 2006 was 325,000. (pdf) Iraqi forces currently stand at 348,000 — a figure that includes a whole lot of no-shows:

He pointed out that when units showed up in Baghdad at 50 percent strength for their 90-day rotations, the American officers were upset, but “senior military leaders of the Iraqi government were kind of pleased that they had gotten 50 percent to come.” …

Similar problems, including “ghost” personnel, afflict the police, Dempsey said. Of the 32,000 Iraqi police lost from the U.S.-and-foreign-trained force of 188,000 in the 18 months before January, more than 14,000 were killed or severely wounded, 5,000 deserted, and the rest are “unaccounted for,” he said.

One obvious reason for the increased estimate in needed forces is that the security situation isn’t a fixed picture. Building an army and a police force takes time. But as Iraqi forces get closer to meeting their U.S.-mandated goals, Iraq’s myriad political-security picture deteriorates. Just today, for instance, terrorists again attacked the al-Askari shrine in Samarra. Given that an attack on the Shiite shrine in 2006 has been cited by President Bush as the catalyst for Iraq’s current sectarian war, it can be expected that the new attack — and those like it in the future — will yield reprisal attacks on Sunnis, increased political acrimony and a further decrease in general public safety. To date, the answer given by U.S. officials to the problem is — you guessed it — a needed increase in the size of Iraq’s security forces. And the cycle repeats itself.

UPDATE: This post originally stated that the al-Askari shrine was attacked yesterday; I regret the error.