Analysis: The Perils of Partnership

Trainers being trained in Kansas

Dec. 18, 2006 issue - You don't usually see sergeants chewing out captains in the U.S. Army. But the unusual happens every day at Fort Riley, Kans. Out here at its training center on the prairie, not far from the Oz Museum (as in "Wizard of"), the Army has created a small, simulated Iraq intended to make soldiers think they're not in Kansas anymore.

Modular trailers have been set up to look like a FOB, or forward operating base, in Iraq. Four "urban clusters"—fake villages with names like Al Amir and Al Hawaej—have been erected. And since July, 11-man squads of U.S. advisers have been going through a crash 60-day training program that is the core of America's effort to draw down its presence in Iraq. The idea: replace the 140,000-strong U.S. combat force there now with smaller, far less visible advisory teams. Embedding as many as 20,000 of these U.S. advisers with Iraqi Army and national police—a fourfold increase over current plans—is the key military recommendation of the Iraq Study Group report just released to thunderous attention. But the U.S. Army doesn't need any prodding. "I'm not waiting with bated breath on the Baker report. We have a feeling for what has worked and what hasn't," says Brig. Gen. Dana Pittard, commander of the Iraq Assistance Group, which operates the base north of Baghdad where the Fort Riley trainees go for one week of "finishing school" before joining their units.

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