Washingtonpost.com
January 4, 2005

U.S. To Embed More Trainers In Iraq Units

By Barry Schweid, Associated Press, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is preparing to "embed" additional American military trainers with Iraqi security units to make them more effective in countering the persistent and violent insurgency, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith said Tuesday.

"It is a matter of taking a new look, of reassessing assumptions," Feith said in an interview in which he described the performance of Iraqi units as mixed.

"In a number of cases they have performed well and in other cases less well," Feith said.

With election of a transitional assembly and provincial councils scheduled for Jan. 30, bloody assaults by insurgents have taken a heavy toll of Iraqi National Guardsmen and other Iraqi forces.

Iraqi forces have been performing better since an Iraqi chain-of-command was established last June, Feith said.

"What we are doing in Iraq is the same thing we have been pushing from the very beginning, and that is finding the most effective way of encouraging and enabling the Iraqis to run their own country and provide their own security," he said.

Feith said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has consistently pushed his subordinates to reassess their strategic assumptions.

Initially, after the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein's government, U.S.-led coalition forces took charge of security in Iraq.

At the same time, though, Americans trained Iraqi national guard and police officers and gradually "embedded" them in U.S. units, Feith said.

Now, he said, "in a flip side of what was done before," Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is moving to embed U.S. "mentors" in Iraqi units.

Feith said he used the term "mentors" rather than advisers because it signifies a continuation of the training of Iraqi forces. "Once they are trained the mentor goes away," he said.

"The idea is this mentoring, this embedding of U.S. people in Iraqi units, will increase the effectiveness of the Iraqi units and provide an important capstone to their training," Feith said.

Serious security problems persisted Tuesday as the governor of the Baghdad region, known for cooperating closely with U.S. troops, was assassinated, and five U.S. troops and 10 Iraqi commandos were killed in other assaults.

The toll over three days is more than 70. Questions have been raised whether it will be safe for Iraqis to vote in parts of the country.

But Bush administration officials have remained steadfast in saying the elections will be held as scheduled.