June '06: Iraqi Army Will Be 'Built' By End of Year -- Nov '07: not ready yet

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-06/2006-06-27-voa84.cfm?CFID=239660925&CFTOKEN=11904307

The U.S. Army general in charge of training Iraq's new security forces says the new Iraqi army will be fully in place by the end of the year, but it will need additional time to become fully capable. The general spoke Tuesday at the Pentagon..

Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey says the effort is on track to finish building Iraq's new army by the end of this year.

"The Iraqi army will be built by the end of this calendar year," said General Dempsey. "All of the pieces and parts and processes will be in place by the end of calendar year '06. Iraqis will be fully capable of recruiting, vetting, inducting, training, forming into units, putting them in barracks, sending them out the gate to perform their missions."

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L26463623.htm

Iraq forces better but not ready yet-US general

BAGHDAD, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Iraq's security forces are improving but will not be ready to take control of as many provinces by the end of the year as the U.S. military had hoped, a top U.S. general said.

Iraq has experienced a rare lull in violence in the past few months, allowing U.S. forces to plan and begin a gradual drawdown of troops that will see 20,000 leave Iraq by July 2008.

The speed of withdrawals has been tied to improvements in Iraq's security forces, which Lieutenant-General James Dubik, the U.S. general in charge of training the nation's soldiers, described as good but mixed.

His predecessor, Lieutenant-General Martin Dempsey, had said in June that Iraqi forces should be ready to be in control of 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces by the end of the year.

"I don't think we'll make that," Dubik told Reuters in an interview late on Sunday.