Iraqi Security Forces Improving

IRAQI SECURITY FORCES, MARINES CAPTURE 72 SUSPECTED MILITANTS and IRAQI SECURITY FORCES FOIL 2 INSURGENT ATTACKS are two CentCom stories that seem to have slipped under the radar of the rest of the press earlier in the week. Excerpts from the first:

The policemen and soldiers immediately returned fire, holding their ground and summoning their quick-reaction force. Marines were also called to assist but were not needed, as the ING decisively repulsed the attack. Several of the attackers fled to a nearby mosque, where the ING found them and a variety of weapons and ammunition. In a full sweep of the area, the ING detained 34 suspected insurgents. The soldiers also discovered a car bomb across the street from the police station. Marine explosives experts were called in to defuse and dispose of the bomb.

And from the second:

Two Iraqi police stations came under attack with small arms fire during a coordinated effort by insurgent fighters to overrun the stations in western and eastern Mosul. The Iraqi police and Soldiers from the Iraqi National Guard successfully repelled the attacks, preventing a reoccurrence of the events of Nov. 10 when many police stations were abandoned and later looted. This is the third and fourth time since then where insurgents have tried but failed to take police stations, proving that the Iraqi Security Forces are growing stronger each day.

We haven't been tracking the performance of individual Iraqi units as closely as we'd like here at The Adventures of Chester, but it seems that there are quite a few that are performing well and improving continuously, while some others might be characterized as being in a "start-up" stage and have yet to prove themselves. This would make sense, though, given the difficulty of building unit cohesion and tactical skill from ground up. As an aside: it seems that the US press does a poor job of identifying Iraqi units by name when discussing their performance, opting instead to lump them together as "Iraqi security forces," without any identifying information. Of course, this fits the narrative of chaos and incompetence that most news organizations produce and advocate.