Guns and water coolers in Iraq

U.S. soldiers drink water, lots of it, in scorching hot Baghdad. Plus, patrolling the streets with a less than disciplined Iraqi army squad.

Editor's note: Read all of Anna Badkhen's dispatches from Iraq here.

By Anna Badkhen

Read more: War, Politics, Middle East, News, Iraq War, Anna Badkhen

May 9, 2008 | BAGHDAD, Iraq -- May 7: Guns at the ready (well, mostly, anyway), soldiers of the Iraqi army Muthana Brigade knocked on the door of a two-story house. "Iraqi army!" they shouted, in Arabic. A few moments later, a woman in a full-length dress and a tan scarf on her head opened the door, and the soldiers, on a routine patrol of the southwestern Baghdad neighborhood of Saidiyah, poured in and began searching the house.

Two of the soldiers walked up the tiled stairs to the second floor. Another asked the woman if she kept any weapons in the house. Another asked if he could have a drink of water. One soldier walked into the empty living room where the TV was on, slumped down on the couch, and stared at the screen, his mouth slightly open.

"They're clueless," spits out U.S. Army 1st Sgt. James Braet, who trained Iraqi troops in Baghdad during his previous deployment, in 2005, and who interacts with them during joint patrols here now almost daily. "They are worse than the ones we trained. They don't hold their weapons right, they don't have the discipline."

For three years, the White House has been repeating like a mantra that the ability of the American troops to cut their presence in Iraq depends on the readiness of the Iraqi forces to handle the Sunni and Shiite militias. As the Iraqi army stands up, American commanders and officials like to say, American forces will be able to stand down.

But five years after the Iraqi army was disbanded by the coalition forces and then put together again, from scratch, the Iraqi forces are far from ready to stand up. During the ill-fated attempt of the Nouri al-Maliki government to pacify the Shiite militias in the southern port of Basra, 1,000 Iraqi officers and enlisted men deserted their posts. A Time magazine article recently described how an Iraqi army unit that was supposed to go on a joint patrol with U.S. troops simply slept through the link-up time with their American counterparts. All despite the $20.4 billion Congress has spent on training and building up the Iraqi security forces since 2004, and despite the fact that the Iraqi army has graduated from driving around in pickup trucks and using decades-old Kalashnikov rifles in 2005 to having armored Humvees, helicopters and planes today.

Even the statistics on the strength of Iraqi security forces is unreliable, according to Stuard Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction for the Defense Department. Iraq says it has 530,000 people in its security forces, including 160,000 in the army. But Bowen said that many of those have been wounded or killed or gone AWOL.

When 1st Sgt. Braet trained Iraqi soldiers, he said, "We lived with them. I personally took them to the range."

But today, he said, "They are trained by the Iraqi army. They have no NCO [noncommissioned officer] structure. The officers are OK, more or less, but the enlisted men don't know anything."

At the patrol in Saidiyah today, the two Iraqis returned from the second floor and declared the house clear of weapons. The thirsty soldier and the soldier who was talking to the woman thanked her and turned to go. And the soldier in the living room kept watching TV until somebody called him and told him it was time to go to the next house.

Next page: No one uses the treadmills because to use them you'd have to unplug the water coolers