Iraq's Army

There has been a lot made over the lack of progress in the training of the Iraqi army. It is going to take a long time to train the Iraqi forces to the level needed to win against terrorists without our help. The performance of Russian special forces at Beslan could also be described as inadequate. Iraqis are going to need to be even better trained than those of the former super-power. However, war opponents need to realize that this makes the case for the Iraq war even stronger.

Al-Qaeda had been concentrating full-time on training and recruiting for over a decade before 9/11. The Baath resistance has been training for over a generation. We have only just begun training the volunteer military of new democracic Iraq. Al-Qaeda and the Baathists have a huge head start on Iraqi recruits. Not removing Saddam would only have made this problem worse by giving the enemy an even bigger head start. We are going to be bogged down in Iraq longer than expected because the war did not start soon enough.