The Redhunter

1st - The moral, fighting effectiveness, and confidence of U.S. combat forces continue to be simply awe-inspiring. In every sensing session and interaction – I probed for weakness and found courage, belief in the mission, enormous confidence in their sergeants and company grade officers, and understanding of the larger mission, a commitment to creating an effective Iraqi Army and Police, unabashed patriotism, and a sense of humor. …

These are the toughest solders we have ever fielded.

2nd – The Iraqi Army is real, growing, and willing to fight. They now have lead action of a huge and rapidly expanding area and population. The battalion level formations are in many cases excellent o most are adequate. However, they are very badly equipped with only a few light vehicles, small arms, moss with body army and one or two uniforms.
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The recruiting now has gotten significant participation by all sectarian groups to include the Sunni. The Partnership Program with U.S. unites will be the key to success with the Embedded Training Teams augmented and nurtured by a U.S. Maneuver Commander. This is simply a brilliant success story. We need at least two-to-fife more years of U.S. partnership and combat backup to get the Iraqi Army ready to stand on it’s own. The interpersonal relationships between Iraqi Army unites and their U.S. trainers are very positive and genuine.

3rd – The Iraqi police are beginning to show marked improvement….

The crux of the war hangs on our ability to create urban and rural local police with the ability to survive on the streets of this incredibly dangerous and lethal environment.
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The police are heavily infiltrated by both the AIF (al-Qaeda in Iraq) and the Shia militia. They are distrusted by the Sunni population. They are incapable of confronting local armed groups. The inherited a culture of inaction, passivity, human rights abuses, and deep corruption.

This will be a ten year project requiring patience, significant resources, and an international public face.

4th – The creating of an Iraqi government of national unity is a central requirement. We must help create a legitimate government for which the Iraqi security forces will fight and die….

The incompetence and corruption of the interim Iraqi Administration has been significant. There is a total lack of trust among the families, the tribes, and the sectarian factions created by the 35 years of despotism and isolation of the criminal Saddam regime. This is a traumatized society with a malignant political culture.
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However, in my view, the Iraqis are likely to successfully create a governing entity. The intelligence picture strongly portrays a population that wants a federal Iraq, wants a national Army, rejects the AIF as a political future for the nation, and is optimistic that their life can be better in the upcoming years.

5th – The foreign jihadist fighters have been defeated as a strategic and operational threat to the creation of an Iraqi government. … They cannot successfully stop the Iraqi police and army recruitment. Their brutal attacks on the civil population are creating support for the emerging government.

6th – The U.S. Inter-Agency Support for our strategy in Iraq is grossly inadequate. …The U.S. influence on the Iraqi national and regional government has been extremely weak.
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The U.S. departments actually fight over who will pay the $11.00 per diem on food. This bureaucratic nonsense is taking place in the context of a war costing the American people $7 billion a month – and a battalion of soldiers and Marines killed or wounded a month.

8th – Thanks to strong CENTCOM leadership and supervision on every level, our detainee policy has dramatically corrected the problems of the first year of the War on Terrorism. Detainee practices and policy in detention centers in both Iraq and Afghanistan that I have visited are firm, professional, humane, and well supervised.

9th – In my judgment, CENTCOM must constrain the force level in Iraq or we risk damaging our ground combat capability which we will need in the ongoing deterrence of threat from North Korea, Iran, Syria, China against Taiwan, Venezuela, Cuba, and other potential flashpoints.

10th – CENTCOM and the U.S. Mission are running out of the most significant leverage we have in Iraq – economic reconstruction dollars.

12th – There is a rapidly growing animosity in our deployed military forces towards the U.S. media. …They (the media) will be objective in reporting facts if we facilitate their information gathering mission. … the enormous good will already generated by the superb performance of U.S. combat forces will ebb away if we do not continue to actively engage media at every level.

Summary

The U.S will remain in serious crisis in Iraq during the coming 24 months. …

The situation is perilous, uncertain, and extreme – but far from hopeless. The U.S. Armed Forces are a rock. This is the most competent and brilliantly led military in a tactical and operational sense that we have ever fielded. …

There is no reason why the U.S. cannot achieve our objectives in Iraq. … This is a ten year task. … We should be able to draw down most of our combat forces in 3-5 years.

It was very encouraging for me to see the progress achieved in the past year. Thanks to the leadership and personal sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of men and women of the CENTCOM team and the CIA – the American people are far safer today than we were in the 18 months following the initial intervention

Incredible.

His report is not entirely positive, but why would we expect it to be? The picture he paints is a logical one; we are succeeding slowly but surely, and yes there are things we could be doing better. Most wars are like this. We tend to forget much about our prior wars; the internal bickering, incompetence, and technical ineptitude. If our press reported World War II like they do the War in Iraq we'd have never carried it through to final victory.

"This is the most competent and brilliantly led military in a tactical and operational sense that we have ever fielded."

We owe them so much.