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U.S. May Add Advisers to Aid Iraq's Military

Jan- 4-2005 » Filed Under: TF Olympia

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By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 - Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top commander in Iraq, is reviewing a proposal to add hundreds of American military advisers to work directly with Iraqi units, whose disappointing performance could jeopardize the long-term American exit strategy from Iraq, senior military officials said Monday. [...]

"The development of Iraqi security forces is, in my view, necessarily the main effort," Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of American forces in northern Iraq, said in an e-mail message from his headquarters in Mosul on Monday. "Building capable and loyal Iraqi forces is what will eventually lead to the defeat of the insurgency and to a sufficiently stable environment so that U.S. and other forces can begin to reduce our presence."

General Ham, noting the earlier efforts by some units, said, "It's time to apply it on a larger scale."

"It seems to me that this is something we want to start doing in the immediate post-election period," he said.

The proposal that General Casey and his top aides are weighing has received support in principle from Pentagon officials at a time when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been urging commanders in Iraq to accelerate the creation of Iraqi security forces and to improve their quality, a senior Pentagon official said Monday.


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