Iraq Is Improving

[FC]

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, now a professor at West Point, was an infantry commander in the Persian Gulf War, head of the U.S. Southern Command and President Clinton’s drug czar. He’s also been a leading critic of Bush administration policy in Iraq and has strongly questioned the judgment of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. So when McCaffrey spent a week in Iraq last month interviewing top brass and commanding officers, it would have been no surprise for him to return with bad news. He didn’t. His report shows that full victory for America and a free, stable government for the Iraqi people are within our grasp — unless we cut and run. Among McCaffrey’s findings: The improved Iraqi forces now “have lead action of a huge and rapidly expanding area and population.” Iraqi enlistment now includes many Sunnis: “This is simply a brilliant success story.” Al Qaida-led forces are “defeated as a strategic and operational threat” to the new government. The Iraqi army “did not crack” after the Samarra Mosque bombing in February. Iraqi forces remain “very badly equipped,” with “almost no mortars, heavy machine guns, decent communications equipment, artillery, armor.”

Iraqi police are showing “marked improvement in capability . . . a few are simply superb.” But beating the terrorists will be “a very, very tough challenge,” requiring more resources over the next decade.

Civilian U.S. governmental support is “grossly inadequate.” Mc-Caffrey blasted the State Department in particular for not being “at war.”

Corruption in the Iraqi Defense and Interior ministries will “require several years of patient coaching and officer education.”

More economic reconstruction funds are needed because “unemployment is a bigger enemy” than the terrorists.

“The U.S. armed forces are a rock . . . the most competent and brilliantly led military in a tactical and operational sense that we have ever fielded . . . simply awe-inspiring.”

With continued progress training Iraqi forces, most U.S. combat troops could leave in three to five years.

There is “rapidly growing animosity” toward the media among members of the U.S. armed forces in Iraq, and McCaffrey emphasized that “armies do not fight wars — countries fight wars.”

We will win in Iraq, according to McCaffrey, but there’s no use kidding ourselves it won’t take years more of commitment and altering our strategy where needed. And the press could help by supporting our troops’ efforts.

McCaffrey’s report also notes that defeat cannot be an option: “We must not fail, or we risk a 10-year disaster of foreign policy in the vital Gulf oil region.”