While I was visiting a friend who owns a company back in Youngstown Ohio, he implored me to tell some folks working with him “tell them what’s really happening in Iraq” and they looked to me for answers.  I pulled up my web page here that showed the metrics from a month ago.  I walked them through the charts and they seemed genuinely interested in what I was saying.  “Why doesn’t the media tell us this?”

Indeed.

To their credit, and I have been quite critical of the lack of analysis of the mainstream media, here are two pieces from the New York Times (subscription might be required) that examine the situation there and buttress, in my humble opinion, my analysis.  The first (h/t www.hotair.com) is a news story by Campbell Robertson entitled “Iraqi Army is willing, but not ready, to fight” and this story is spot on.  Training a basic soldier takes about 7-15 weeks, including infantry specialization.  Molding 700 men or so into an effective fighting organization that can move, shoot, and communicate can take many months, if not years, especially if you don’t have an effective and mature NCO corps (sergeants).  But the creation of a professional logistics organization in a country that relied for decades on a dictator for direction and developing leadership that prevents corruption or at least minimizes it, will take a couple of years, at minimum.  These are part of the so called enablers: logistics, airpower, intelligence, training cadres, etc.

• These discussions boil down to one complaint: that the Americans have stopped providing them with batteries, fuel, tires and other basic equipment they need, and that the Iraqi military authorities have not picked up the slack. That led Lieutenant Mahmoud to say that because of corruption and logistical problems this army was years away from being able to protect the country on its own. The Iraqi Army, he said, is up to the task but lacking the tools.

The article mentions “tough love” of the US troops not providing all the Iraqi troops needs and forcing their system to try and work. In an Op-Ed also in the New York Times, Stephen Biddle, Michael O’Hanlon, and Kenneth Pollack authored a piece titled “Not quite ready to go home” and also get it exactly right.  These authors have been very critical in the past but have also received flack for seemingly backing the Administration.  They discuss the fact that the situation is improving markedly and that we are most certainly going to be reducing our troop footprint soon, but that perhaps the timeline that seemingly Prime Minister Al-Malaki endorsed was meant for Iraqi domestic political ears and not as an actual strategy.  As Tip O’Neil famously said, all politics is local.

• Troop loyalty is not the only concern. The Iraqi security forces are simply not yet able to operate effectively without United States air support, combat advisers and help with logistics and intelligence. When Iraqi units with no American embeds tried to take the port city of Basra last spring, they were turned back in mass confusion, and it required United States combat help to save the day.

Two stories showing the situation on the ground published by the New York Times that are grounded in reality. If the NYTimes is coming around, what’s next?