General faults U.S. on Iraqi military

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The American general in charge of training the new Iraqi military after Baghdad fell says the Bush administration's strategy to use those forces to replace departing U.S. soldiers was hobbled from its belated start by poor pre-war planning and insufficient staff and equipment. The account of Major General Paul Eaton, who retired on Jan. 1 after 33 years in the U.S. Army, suggests that commanders in Iraq might by now have been much closer to President George W. Bush's goal of withdrawing American forces if they had not lost much of the first year's chance to begin building a capable force.

Eaton's views, drawn from an essay he is preparing for publication and from interviews in which he spoke out publicly for the first time, were broadly affirmed by Pentagon and other civilian officials involved at the time. They agreed that the mission also was slowed by conflicting visions from senior Pentagon and administration officials, civilian administrators in Baghdad and the former top commander of the military's Central Command, which carried out the invasion.

While he criticized others for decisions that led to what he called a "false start," Eaton accepted responsibility for the most visible setback in the training, when a battalion of the new Iraqi Army dissolved in April 2004 as it was sent into its first major battle. After that embarrassment, which Eaton said he might have headed off, Pentagon officials sent Lieutenant General David Petraeus, who had commanded the 101st Airborne Division during the invasion and the early occupation, to review the program and then to take over the training mission after Eaton completed his yearlong tour.

"Paul Eaton and his team did an extraordinary amount for the Iraqi Security Force mission," said Petraeus, now commander of the army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. "They established a solid foundation on which we were able to build as the effort was expanded very substantially and resourced at a much higher level."
Eaton was commander of all army infantry training at Fort Benning, Georgia, when he was told on May 9, 2003 - just over a week after Bush's "mission accomplished" speech - to hurry to Baghdad, where he was to set up and then command an organization to rebuild Iraq's military. "I was very surprised to receive a mission so vital to our exit strategy so late," Eaton said. "I would have expected this to have been done well before troops crossed the line of departure. That was my first reaction: We're a little late here."

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http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/10/news/army.php

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