Our guys working this area for a living all believe Chalabi and all those guys in their Bond Street suits are charlatans. To take them for a source of anything except a fantasy trip would be a real stretch. But it's an article of faith among those with no military experience that the Iraqi military is low-hanging fruit.
The Iraqi military are able to deploy these weapons within 45 minutes of a decision to do so.
We know where they are [Iraq's weapons of mass destruction]. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
We prefer that the leaders of the Iraqi armed forces do the honorable thing; stop fighting for a regime that does not deserve your loyalty.
There's plenty of room for finger-pointing for the debacle in Iraq. If it's a problem that the Iraqi military is broken at its core, then there's no point in sending more Humvees and Apaches.
The Israelis know that if the Iraqi or the Iranian army came across the Jordan River, I would personally grab a rifle, get in a ditch, and fight and die
There's been a lot of disappointments with the Iraqi army, no doubt about that. Some units have performed well, especially their special operations units. But a lot of their units have not.
Saddam Hussein's soldiers and his great forces gave the Americans a lesson which will not be forgotten by history. Truly.
The new troops in Iraq need to be Iraqi troops.
We need to embed our forces - our troops inside the Iraqi military. We need to arm directly the Kurds. And all of that has to be done in concert with the Arab nations.
The training and equipping of Iraqi security forces should be accelerated.
If you look at the current Mosul campaign against ISIL, for example the few thousand troops that we have there to support that effort allows the Iraqi military to move forward in an effective way.
During the surge and in the years after the surge, Iraqi forces fought and died for their country at vastly higher numbers than did U.S. and coalition forces. We know that they can fight.
