Max Boot in the WSJ:
"Contractors may be successful in training Iraqi forces but I have my doubts about whether they will be up to the magnitude of the task. Iraq has no fighter aircraft and no air-control system. It has only some 70 tanks and no artillery. Its army has almost no experience in combined-arms warfare, having devoted the last eight years, for understandable reasons, to counterinsurgency operations.
"In other words, Iraq is almost defenseless. That makes it easy prey for Iran, its historic rival. This doesn't mean that an Iranian invasion is likely. Yet Iranian bullying and influence-peddling is going on all the time, and if Iraq can't defend its borders, Tehran will have an extra element of coercive leverage.
"Under these circumstances, leaving Iraq entirely would be an act of folly. We are still in Kosovo, South Korea and other post-conflict zones that are far more stable. We need to be in Iraq too."
