corrente

Oops, at least redundant word there.

Alex Berenson of The Times reported:

When they are ready, [the Iraqi's] new army will have 735 men.

In Washington, politicians and military planners say the United States needs to rely much more heavily on Iraqi soldiers and police officers, both to restore order and to lighten the load on overworked American troops. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that strengthening the Iraqi security services is a top priority. Pentagon planners have optimistically spoken about replacing American soldiers with Iraqi troops.

But on the ground here, the Iraqi cavalry appears a long way off.

Until now, the American-led occupying force has made only desultory efforts to train a force to replace Saddam Hussein's army of 400,000, which disintegrated with Mr. Hussein's defeat.

"I did not anticipate the level of violence that we're going through right now," said General Eaton, the former commander of Fort Benning, Ga., where the Army trains its elite Ranger units.

Even if the United States can find enough officers who pass security and other checks to carry out this plan, these troops will not be available until next summer, General Eaton said.

The new units will be lightly trained, to carry out tasks like guard duty and border patrols, rather than raids and weapons sweeps. At first, they will carry only assault rifles and some light machine guns in a country where rocket-propelled grenade launchers are sometimes displayed at funerals.

The new army will be of little use against well-armed guerrillas, much less as a deterrent to the established armies of Iran and Turkey, Iraq's neighbors to the east and north, said Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington policy institute. That is likely to remain the case for the next several years, he said.

"One of the great problems here is that they are creating an Iraqi army that is seen by most Iraqis as not an Iraqi army, but as a paramilitary force that looks more like a tool of the occupation than a national defense force," Mr. Cordesman said.

About 20 American, Australian and British officers and enlisted soldiers are on hand to oversee Vinnell Corporation, a Virginia subsidiary of the Northrop Grumman Corporation, which runs the training under contract.

Didn't someone tell these guys the plan for the Iraqi occupation?

What do you mean, "what plan"?