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| A group of five armed men shot the 12 soldiers in the head after stopping the vehicle carrying them on a road leading to Kirkuk. |
Some interesting facts on the New Iraqi security forces:
- *Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told senators that Iraqi Army units had absentee rates of up to 40 percent partly because many new soldiers had failed to return to duty after going home on leave.
- **Lt Gen Petraeus declined to specify the desertion rate for the Iraqi security forces.
- *At the hearing of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, read an e-mail message from a Marine colonel who complained about corrupt Iraqi commanders in his area.
They have been lying about their numbers in order to get more money,” she read from the message, which an aide said was sent this year. “They say they have 150 when there are only 100. The senior officers take a cut from the top. We’ve caught soldiers in houses stealing property, and the commander won’t react to it. They have no interest in learning the job, because right now the Marines are doing all of that.
- **”There clearly was a huge challenge, particularly in the Sunni areas and in the area of Nineveh province, to a couple of regular army battalions,” Lt Gen Petraeus said.
“This is an area where the insurgents were actually cutting the heads off soldiers as they were trying to come back from leave and so forth. Major challenge, retention in those units,” he added, but said “we’ve turned the corner with that.”
These items struck me because after almost two full years in Iraq, we actually have generals calmly discussing the effect beheadings have on retention rates. You’d think this might be somewhat discouraging, but Petraeus says confidently that they’ve “turned the corner on that.” Maybe he feels retention might improve when the Iraqi recruits are shot instead of beheaded?
*New York Times, Many Iraqi Troops Not Fully Trained, U.S. Officials Say