Credibility Chasm

To dovetail with my previous post, President Bush said the following on Saturday in his weekly radio address:

I'm encouraged by the increasing size and capability of the Iraqi security forces. Today they have more than 100 battalions operating throughout the country, and our commanders report that the Iraqi forces are serving with increasing effectiveness.

Now here's the AP report on what "our commanders" actually said this week:

Only one Iraqi army battalion seems capable of fighting without U.S. help, a senior American general told Congress on Thursday, leaving some lawmakers worried about worsening conditions there despite his assurances that the overall military strategy is working.

Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the number of Iraqi army battalions rated by U.S. officers as capable of fighting without U.S. help had dropped from three to one.

Casey said 75 percent of the U.S.-trained Iraqi army was at least capable of engaging in combat, albeit with U.S. troops providing support in most cases. He declined to give an exact breakdown of Iraqi combat readiness, which he said was classified as secret, but he said more than 30 battalions are judged capable of taking the lead in an offensive, with U.S. support. Only one can operate entirely on its own.

A battalion consists of 300-1,000 troops; it is my understanding that a battalion in the Iraqi army generally consists of about 800 men. And after all the blood, treasure and years we've poured into training it, the entire Iraqi army contains exactly one viable battalion? No wonder those pesky details are "classified as secret."

The holy grail of our exit strategy---the ultimate standard that will determine how many thousands more American troops will die in Iraq and when the rest will come home---is supposed to be Iraqi combat readiness. This should be the first question asked every single day of Scott McClellan. The names of Iraq's most senior military officers---and the status of the divisions and brigades they command---should be part of our national discourse. Bush should address the nation once every few months with progress reports and hard figures. Or are we well on the way to abandoning the pretense that the training of Iraqi forces has anything at all to do with when we're leaving? What do these comments by Rumsfeld and Myers tell us?

If the progress we're making is "classified as secret" at least this administration has done nothing in the past to make us doubt that we'll be kept fully and truthfully informed.