After the end of the Iraqi invasion of Mosul, the Pentagon set upon itself to carry out an intense program to grow the Iraqi elite Counter Terrorism Services (CTS), which lost roughly 40% of its members to fighting in the city. The Pentagon got $1.2 billion, with an eye toward training 20,000 more CTS.
Some officials were conceding even back in July that this 20,000 goal wasn’t entirely realistic. The first accounting, which goes through October, showed that they fell as far short of this as is literally possible: no troops were trained at all.
Iraq was struggling mightily to get qualified recruits, with 300,000 applicants pared down to just 3,000 for screening, and even then officials said at most 1,000 were to be accepted in the academy. Between then and now, that ended up being an outright 0.
The Pentagon did not say how much of their $1.2 billion was spent on producing all none of these troops, but officials are suggesting Iraq “has some thinking to do” about whether they have the capacity to add to their special forces.
The trouble with elite troops is that anyone qualified to be an elite soldier even in the Iraqi military can do enough math to understand losses of 40% = red shirty job, without the glamour of dying in space.
well at least they beat them The last Iraqi army we trained and equipped with tanks got surrounded by a army 1 tenth their size driving those fast little Toyota pickups . The Iraq’s we trained jumped out of their tanks and ran as fast as they could leaving their tanks and running from those fast pickups .
That elite training is worth every penny if it trains people to run faster than speeding pickup trucks. On sand yet; talk about superfit.
Russian-trained Syrians seem to do better but then I suspect the Russians give the Syrians the best training they can as they have no intention of remaining once ISIS and Al Qaeda are liquidated except with the agreement of the Syrian government. On the other hand the United States intends to remain in Iraq for ever and use Israel to control the Middle East as far as possible. So why would the United States give their best training when the trained forces might be used against them or their BBFs, Israel. The Iraqi PMU with Iranian training seem to have done quite well against ISIS, which suggests that American training really isn’t as good as it’s made out to be.
Sloppy, indifferent, let’s say it – stupid – training by lazy visitors who just want to get out of there. “Results”, as expected.
I doubt know if it is possible to train people to do what they don’t intend to do , unless you stand over them with a whip
I would suggest that some dedicated and independent journalist make the effort to follow the money. Spending $1.2B (if they spent it all) and producing zilch is pure arrogance – even for the Pentagon – and someone should probably go to jail. Ha!
Yes, the independent journalist who broke the story!
LOL. since the USA makes its own money and has no care for its people except the few rich and the “corporate persons”, the waste has no meaning.
However, for the leaders of the greatest military force the world has ever seen to achieve such results does no help the USA’s vaunted exceptional reputation, especially added to the “successes” of the rest of its battles this century.
More like the “most expensive” military the world has ever seen. Wonderful waste of resources for little or no result. Truly American.
Who could have known that watching the DVD box set of Adam 12 could be so ineffective at producing a security force?
How are corporations controlling every thing much different from communism controlling everything . corporations are just small communist clubs that now qualify for lower taxes .. With the money saved by lower taxes the corporations can invest in .new labor saving machinery . So they don’t have to pay for so much health care costs . In the United States health care costs alone are often greater than total labor costs in most foreign countries . This is the reason smart companies have to move out of the United States.. Only industries that don’t need many workers per dollar earned are allowed to prosper in the USA. By my analyses the greater the tax cut the more modern machinery the less workers we will need . Trump maybe should have talked to me , a deplorable , before he started coming up with all these republican ideas .