I have a stupid question... The White House often talks about training Iraqi security forces (see, e.g., http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...20051130.html), but how much f-ing time does it take to do this? Army bootcamp is 8 weeks... Marine bootcamp is 12 weeks... NYPD academy is 6 mos... wtf are these people doing, getting a bachelors degree? it's been almost 4 years...

I suspect a huge obstacle in getting these forces "properly" trained is that they don't possess the same ethos and culture as we and those who are/will be judging them.

Army basic training is 8 weeks, you learn how to march, use and maintain your equipment, military courtesy, speak milspec, history, tradition, customs, etc. Then the recruit goes to advanced individual training where they learn the specifics of their military occupational specialty--anywhere from another couple of months to upwards of a year.

I suspect Marine bootcamp and police officers have similar regimens.

One of the things that each of these recruits have that none of the ISF recruits have is fundamental values that we find important...they grew up under Saddam's reign. If you give a trainee cop a badge and a gun, he prorbably won't overtly violate say the 4th Ammendment; give a Marine recruit an M16 and he'll not likely summarily execute his neighbor for being a different religion.

The ISF recruits need a crash course in fundamental civil rights--they've proven time an again that whatever we're doing isn't working so far.

I think the program in place is lacking, I can't identify markers or metrics other than, as you've pointed out, the results aren't there. I think think the goal of instilling Western traditions in a handful of years is an absurd pipedream--but I guess that just makes me unpatriotic.

Based on what I read (Fareed Zakaria in the current Newsweek, for instance), the top issue isn't so much military training as it is "training" Iraqi soldiers in the idea that their duty is to Iraq as a whole, not to any particular part of it. Iraqi thinking is apparently similar to that of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, i.e., my loyalty is to Virginia, not to the United States of America.

The new Iraqi army is mostly Shia. Many Shiite soldiers seem to like to kill Sunnis in their off hours.