U.S. Sees Iraqi National Guard as the Ticket Home

[papau]

With desertion at 80% and shortages of helmets and body armor, the current 41000 "troops" with 3 weeks training at "ING" (No, not Ing as in US incorporated - it's Iraq Natiuonal Guard "Island") are barely growing in number.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-training21aug21.story

U.S. Sees Iraqi National Guard as the Ticket Home
The Army is teaching recruits to take on insurgents and guard the cities. But training time is limited and the challenges are many.
By Mark Mazzetti
Times Staff Writer

August 21, 2004

TIKRIT, Iraq — <snip>Parris Island it's not. Here at "ING Island," for Iraqi national guard, a 25-acre facility inside the sprawling grounds of the 1st Infantry Division's headquarters in Tikrit, the 330 Iraqi recruits get just three weeks of training before being dispatched into the country's roughest areas to take on insurgents.

<snip>
"It hasn't gone well," Eaton told Associated Press. "We've had almost one year of no progress." ...The size and capabilities of the Iraqi security forces have been something of a political football.In Washington and Baghdad, senior Bush administration officials last fall and winter cited growing numbers of Iraqi troops as evidence that Iraq would soon be able to take over its own security.Yet U.S. officials in Iraq say those numbers masked a grim reality: The troops were nowhere near ready for combat.This was proved in April, they say, when units of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (the former name of the national guard) and the Iraqi police crumbled and fled during the dual Sunni and Shiite uprisings in central Iraq. <snip>

Perhaps the biggest problem over the last year, officials say, has been outfitting the nascent Iraqi security forces. Contract problems have plagued the effort, delaying the flow of uniforms, helmets, weapons and radios.... there still are shortages of helmets and body armor for the national guardsmen, officials say. <snip>