Iraqi Guards fly to Britain for training

[Crab_Sig]

Early copy of The Sunday Telegraph, page 2:

Up to 30 members of the Iraqi National Guard are to undergo military training in Britain after defence chiefs ruled that it was too dangerous to hold courses in Iraq. The troops will fly in to Britain tomorrow on a Hercules military transport aircraft to begin an intensive three-month course at the Infantry Battle School in Brecon, South Wales, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal...

The Iraqis, a mixture of young officers and senior non-commissioned officers will be trained in basic tactics, such as platoon attacks and ambushes as well as in peacekeeping operations including anti-riot drills, house, car and personnel searches and manning vehicle check points...

One senior officer told The Sunday Telegraph: "The training of Iraqis is part of the exit strategy from Iraq. We are planning to create a cadre of Iraqi instructors who will eventually be able to run autonomous courses in Iraq."

Discuss...


(Mods, hard copy so no link to post)

 

[woody]

Good idea at least they will live till end of the course .Unless sodhexco
is catering for them .

 

[ViroBono]

Unless sodhexco is catering for them .

Ah yes; the 'Pay as you die' system.

Let us hope all 30 return to Iraq to take up their duties.

 

[One_of_the_strange]

"too dangerous to hold courses in Iraq"

Says it all really. Over two years into the place and we've gone precisely nowhere - or rather backwards as the locals weren't this hostile when we originally arrived.

Or perhaps someone from over the pond would like to tell me that we've "broken the back of the insurgency" or "reached a tipping point" ? (Again.) Then call me a "eurofag defeatist" and ask why I "hate freedom" for doubting the gospel that flows from the lips of the current US administration.

Quite how Blair thinks we're going to be able to withdraw troops from Iraq to go back to Afghanistan in this climate is beyond me. Still, I'll get a free holiday somewhere so why worry.

 

[Tango34_UK]

I might have the wrong story here, but wasnt there a Iraq Military Officer doing RM Training, at the start of Iraq 1 and when war broke out we had him taken in as a POW?

 

[Nehustan]

I think this is an oustandingly good idea. We need to do this with more than just a few. They should be drilled to an inch of their life. I was in Cairo some years ago and saw the conscripts in the Aegyptian Army, and let me tell you I'd be suprised if they could fight their way out of a paper bag. Once here they should be sent over to Ulster, and practice Fibua patroling over there. Then maybe some intelligence training in London. I think they need to drilled, taken to the brink of total paranoia and back, then maybe they will be better capable of filfilling their role. Certainly not something to be thought about rather done ASAP.

 

[PartTimePongo]

Is it possible that some of the insugents we are now facing , have actually recieved Military training from us prior to Gulf 1?

 

[KGB_resident]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/29/nirq129.xml

An Iraqi army major general is expected to arrive this week to announce formally the opening of the course, but several Iraqi-born interpreters, to accompany the troops, have already arrived and, according to one officer, are familiarising themselves with all things British - including the local pubs and shops.

If they are not hidden insurgents then it is rather tourism of possible future asylum seekers.

 

[whitenoisebabies]

how long before these lot are putside the dss office waiting for benefits????? cynical me???

 

[Agent_Smith]

Is it possible that some of the insugents we are now facing , have actually recieved Military training from us prior to Gulf 1?

Just what i was worried about when i read it on sunday morning.

Despite how close we are today as allies, we must remember the tendency of american and british 'training operations' biting us on the arrse a few years down the line.

 

[felixthefox]

did we not sell them a load of old desert kit at sum point ?

which was why when the boys still where wearing green kit in the desert the iraqis had full desert uniform
not that it did them any good

this might be a load of bull
think it might be one of those a mate of a mate told me that ....

 

[PartTimePongo]

I'd rather they were here sponging off the baroo , then forming instructional cadres in snap ambushes and training future MFC's.

Some of these bloody ambushes, especially in the early days before 'Awayday terrorists' were just too damn well organised.

 

[Vegetius]

The real question is whether they get sent on the Advanced Skiffing Course or not?

V!