Recent news stories have described the US' efforts to reconstitute an Iraqi Army and that the Administration expects to reduce the number of US soldiers in Iraq by thousands as the Iraqi soldiers finish their training.

I don't want to debate whether the Iraq war was justified or whether we're in there for the wrong reasons or any of that. There are too many other debates on that going on here.

I'm worried, though:

Are we creating an Iraqi Army faster than a viable civilian authority that would command them?

I've seen lots of news stories about Iraqi police and army training that we're providing, but not much news lately about creating a viable and working Iraqi government recognized by the people.

Are we creating a horse with no rider? Or are WE the rider?

With all of the looting and potential for anarchy with no central government for Iraq, and us undermanned, I think it's reasonable that our primary goal is to ensure some safety for the population. The recent targeting of civilian aid workers and Iraqi citizens needs to be squelched. Training Iraqi law enforcement officials ameliorates the strain on our troops, and shifts the burden to where it will ultimately rest. The Iraqi population also appears hesitant to allow neighboring countries in to help with the nation-building, which makes such training even more urgent.

Although it's very important to install a strong government, moving too swiftly could be counterproductive. Bosnia provides an example that often the first groups to get organized tend to be radical. The horse riders will likely be us, or preferrably the UN, for quite a while yet.

You might not want to expect stories about governmental reconstruction unless there is a major milestone. It doesn't sell as well as military stories...

There has of course been progress towards an Iraqi constitution and a number of local governments have already been formed. There are nebulous reports of a stall in action by the Governing Council, but they have said they expect to have a constitution in a year or so (from September, I believe...) and to support Mrs, Pigpen's comment even this inaction is being blamed on poor security (by the Iraqi Foreign Minister.)

Forget whether or not we are creating them faster than we are a civilian government to control them. Are we building them up faster than even we can control them, with respect to the increased terrorist attacks that have been happening?

There's another thread here about a US Colonel under charges for threatening an Iraqi police captain. The police officer was heading up insurgent action in his area, and attacking US soldiers in his town.

We allowed tens of thousands of soldiers to just lay down their arms shed their uniforms and walk away from combat, without any form of properly ID-ing them, or even attempting to.

How many of these soldiers were truly "forced" to fight under penalty of death? How many were perhaps Saddam loyalists, looking to stay alive, to fight just the kind of fight we are seeing now? And we want to "train" them in our methods of fighting and policing, so that they can use it against us? Using arms we supply?

I wasn't for this war, but now that we are here, we need to do it right. We don't need to draw down troops between now and march or April of next year, we need more. We need to make sure that the Iraqis we are recruiting clearing and training aren't going to turn around and shoot us with our own ordinance.

In short, we need to make sure things really are secure, before we simply say they are, and start withdrawing troops because it will be good come election time. If that takes more troops now, so be it.