'How Disbanding the Iraqi Army Fueled ISIS'

摘要

"General Ray Odierno, [former] Army chief of staff, says the U.S. could have weeded Saddam Hussein's loyalists from the Iraqi army while keeping its structure, and the bulk of its forces, in place. 'We could have done a lot better job of sorting through that and keeping the Iraqi army together,' he told TIME on Thursday. 'We struggled for years to try to put it back together again.' The decision to dissolve the Iraqi army robbed Baghdad's post-invasion military of some of its best commanders and troops. ... it also drove many of the suddenly out-of-work Sunni warriors into alliances with a Sunni insurgency that would eventually mutate into ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria]. Many former Iraqi military officers and troops, trained under Saddam, have spent the last 12 years in Anbar Province battling both U.S. troops and Baghdad's Shi'ite-dominated security forces, Pentagon officials say. 'Not reorganizing the army and police immediately were huge strategic mistakes,' said [General] Jack Keane, a retired Army vice chief of staff and architect of the 'surge' of 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Iraq in 2007. 'We began to slowly put together a security force, but it took far too much time and that gave the insurgency an ability to start to rise.'" To view the complete article, visit https://time.com/390075 3/ isis-iraq-syria-army-united-states-military/.