What the Hell Are We Doing in Iraq?

U.S. Report on Iraqi Troops Is Mixed

By Robert Burns
Associated Press
Saturday, February 25, 2006; Page A13

The number of Iraqi army battalions judged by their American trainers to be capable of fighting insurgents without U.S. help has fallen from one to none since September, Pentagon officials said yesterday.
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The report was written last week, before the bombing of a Shiite shrine and a wave of deadly reprisal attacks. It is the third in a series of reports that Congress requires from the Pentagon every three months.

The U.S. report claimed important successes against the insurgency and said the term "insurgency" is not necessarily appropriate anymore because the synergy that once existed among various rebel elements "is breaking apart." The report asserted that the insurgents have alienated most ordinary Iraqis. "Terrorist attacks have failed to create and spread sectarian conflict," it said.