Nearly half of new Iraq army has quit

[Stuie]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/11/sprj.irq.main/index.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- About 300 of 700 members of the new Iraqi army have resigned, citing unhappiness with terms, conditions and pay and with instructions of commanding officers, a representative of the U.S.-led coalition said Thursday.

"It's a new force, and ... we face some difficulties," the representative said.

Glad to see things progressing so well over there.

[Az]

Glad to see you're gloating.

[Q Classic]

they only had 700 troops?

[SlowwHand]

I guess they can go form a labor union and/or go wash their frilly little ruffled panties.

[Boris Godunov]

This certainly doesn't bode well for the handover of control to an Iraqi authority any time soon.

[Harry Tuttle]

Well what do you expect? When Saddam ran things it was more like the mafia than a typical "Westernized" army. They were probably pissed that they couldn't get drunk on duty or harass the local woman folk. Plus, they aren't being fed the "die for the great cause against Satan" BS.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Azazel
Glad to see you're gloating.

I'll be happy to gloat over anything that makes GWB's insane foreign policy look bad, as long as it does not involve death/injury to anyone.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
they only had 700 troops?

some confusion here: 700 or so Iraqi "army" troops in training. about 60000 iraqi police. About 12,000 Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. Several tens of thousands of Facilities protection and border patrol forces.

Negative spin - over a third quit
Positive spin - 250 out of about 100,000.

Reality - this is a small piece of overall picture, but for this particular piece. OTOH how many new recruits drop out of any army? How many dropped out of the new Afghan National Army. ISTR the numbers were pretty high there too, yet the ANA evolved into a fairly effective force. Hopefully this is a sign tha the training is rigourous enough to discourage the weak.

[Patroklos]

Alot of peole seem to need reminding that the war has only been over or 6 months. Exactly how ong were you expecting a recovery to take, 2 weeks? This is at the very least a one to two year job, and despite what the media says both democrats and republicans knew this.

I like that spin noted above, typical of the left.

-Pat

[chequita guevara]

Bush and Co said Iraq would be up and running in three months.

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Alot of peole seem to need reminding that the war has only been over or 6 months. Exactly how ong were you expecting a recovery to take, 2 weeks? This is at the very least a one to two year job, and despite what the media says both democrats and republicans knew this.

I like that spin noted above, typical of the left.

-Pat

"Bush is, of course, doing nothing wrong! Everything is fine in Iraq! We have defeated all the terrorists! They are lost in the desert! They cannot even read their compass!"

[germanos]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


OTOH how many new recruits drop out of any army? How many dropped out of the new Afghan National Army. ISTR the numbers were pretty high there too, yet the ANA evolved into a fairly effective force. Hopefully this is a sign tha the training is rigourous enough to discourage the weak.

Newspaper here has it that the 250 that left were of the newly formed batallion that was 'inaugurated' (for lack of a better word) end oktober, and presented as the starting point of forming the new Iraqi army. They had finished their nine weeks training at that point.

reportedly, the men had left complaining over their low pay (60$/month), and others had been threatened by insurgents.

[SlowwHand]

The Republican Guard gets their experience from 1-on-1 training with Tassadar.

[MrFun]

@ SlowwHand's joke






And Che -- yeah, I wonder where the Bush administration went wrong -- maybe by making such exaggerated, gloating statements in the first place?

[Combat Ingrid]

Is that your desktop, Sloww?