Maybe it's time for Fearless Leader to do another fall-down funny skit for the Press Club. You know, he can be shown looking under his La-Z-Boy muttering "Gotta have some battalions here somewhere. Hee hee hee."
The number of Iraqi army battalions that can fight insurgents without U.S. and coalition help has dropped from three to one, top U.S. generals told Congress yesterday, adding that the security situation in Iraq is too uncertain to predict large-scale American troop withdrawals anytime soon. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who oversees U.S. forces in Iraq, said there are fewer Iraqi battalions at "Level 1" readiness than there were a few months ago. Although Casey said the number of troops and overall readiness of Iraqi security forces have steadily increased in recent months, and that there has not been a "step backwards," both Republican and Democratic senators expressed deep concern that the United States is not making enough progress against a resilient insurgency.
Just so you know, a US Army battalion varies between 500 and 1,200 soldiers. That's how many Iraqis we've trained since the fall of Hussein's regime in April, 2003. At that rate, we'll have trained 150,000 by the year 2,317. Hooray!
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