Aljazeera.Net - US trains proxy to quell resistance:
"Two Iraqi men fire a rocket-propelled grenade at a passing army truck sending up a huge plume of smoke.
From what appears to be the wreckage, a US soldier emerges and walks over to correct their firing posture. 'The first shot was good,' he says. 'Make the next one better.'
Here US occupation forces are training a special division of the Iraqi army to tackle the Iraqi resistance.
The Iraqi National Task Force (INTF), now standing at 1710 and eventually to number some 7500 is preparing to fight inside Iraq's cities - learning skills such as house-to-house combat and guerrilla warfare techniques.
They could be fighting fellow Iraqis in Falluja or Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army as early as 1 July.....
As the US army begins lowering its profile ahead of the creeping deadline, the late formation of a proxy force such as the INTF to combat resistance fighters highlights a deepening problem.
A serious imbalance of power exists between occupation-supervised Iraqi security forces such as the army, and independent armed groups operating in the country.
US soldiers at the Taji army base
Once the most powerful military force in the Arab world with one million soldiers, 9000 armoured fighting vehicles and more than 500 combat aircraft, the Iraqi armed forces now stand at just 6000 men with AK-47s, outgunned and outnumbered in their own country by tribes, the resistance, any of the four major militias, or the army of millions of angry unemployed.
The current goal for Iraq's combined army, air force and navy is 35,000 troops by the year's end.
Just as alarming, the army, which was dissolved so it could no longer be a threat to the region, now faces a gross imbalance of power with all six of its neighbours.
Far from threatening Israel, theoretically Iraq now requires protection even from Jordan or Kuwait, its weakest neighbours. "
"Two Iraqi men fire a rocket-propelled grenade at a passing army truck sending up a huge plume of smoke.
From what appears to be the wreckage, a US soldier emerges and walks over to correct their firing posture. 'The first shot was good,' he says. 'Make the next one better.'
Here US occupation forces are training a special division of the Iraqi army to tackle the Iraqi resistance.
The Iraqi National Task Force (INTF), now standing at 1710 and eventually to number some 7500 is preparing to fight inside Iraq's cities - learning skills such as house-to-house combat and guerrilla warfare techniques.
They could be fighting fellow Iraqis in Falluja or Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army as early as 1 July.....
As the US army begins lowering its profile ahead of the creeping deadline, the late formation of a proxy force such as the INTF to combat resistance fighters highlights a deepening problem.
A serious imbalance of power exists between occupation-supervised Iraqi security forces such as the army, and independent armed groups operating in the country.
US soldiers at the Taji army base
Once the most powerful military force in the Arab world with one million soldiers, 9000 armoured fighting vehicles and more than 500 combat aircraft, the Iraqi armed forces now stand at just 6000 men with AK-47s, outgunned and outnumbered in their own country by tribes, the resistance, any of the four major militias, or the army of millions of angry unemployed.
The current goal for Iraq's combined army, air force and navy is 35,000 troops by the year's end.
Just as alarming, the army, which was dissolved so it could no longer be a threat to the region, now faces a gross imbalance of power with all six of its neighbours.
Far from threatening Israel, theoretically Iraq now requires protection even from Jordan or Kuwait, its weakest neighbours. "
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