Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

DATE=10/06/03

TYPE=INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

TITLE=PAUL HUGHES OF THE NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY

NUMBER=3-803

BYLINE=DAVID BORGIDA

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

INTERNET=

INTRO: Security is a serious issue in Iraq. The U-S-led coalition in Iraq is trying to maintain security there in part by training former Iraqi soldiers to be part of a new military force. Colonel Paul Hughes of the National Defense University was in Iraq recently, and he provides insight about how the training is coming along.

MR. BORGIDA

And now with us, Colonel Paul Hughes, with the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. Colonel Hughes is just back in Washington from a visit to Iraq.

Thanks for being with us, and we hope you can share some of your first-person views of the situation there. First, I would like to ask you about the graduation of this new Iraqi troop battalion this past weekend. I believe 700 of the 900 who first began have graduated. What is your assessment of their capabilities?

COLONEL HUGHES

Well, I am not directly involved with the training for these soldiers, but 75 percent of them came from the old Iraq Army that had stood down when we had asked them to stand down during the campaign. That gave us a leg up on getting them trained, because they were already disciplined and they possessed some of the basic military skills that normally would consume a great deal of time when you're trying to train a new unit.

Many of them already knew how to use weapons and knew how to do drill and ceremonies and things of that nature. So, consequently, our training went much faster. As a result of that, we were able to speed up the training plan for the rest of the army, almost to twice the planned speed that we had before.

MR. BORGIDA

Colonel, I would imagine that some of our viewers might be asking themselves, as I guess I have as well, if these are formers members of the Iraqi military, how loyal perhaps would they be to a new Iraqi government? Could you give us some sense of that?

COLONEL HUGHES

David, that's a good question. The fundamental misunderstanding that many people have about Iraq is that the army was a heavily politicized organization, when in fact it was the Special Republican Guards and the Republican Guards, along with the special security organizations, that were the real henchmen for the regime. The vast majority of the army was a conscript army. The soldiers had no choice; they had to go serve. And many Iraqis didn't like that kind of experience.

As a result, many of the people who served in the military were Iraqis who were patriotic for their country but not to Saddam's regime. In my dealing with Iraqi officers following the war, every one of them admitted that they were not fans of the Saddam regime.

MR. BORGIDA

But I have to ask you, there was some question earlier on about police being vetted and so on; is that a conversation that you feel confident would be the truth or are they saying what they would expect a U-S military person to be expecting to hear?

COLONEL HUGHES

Another good question. When you're vetting these people, as all of these soldiers were -- when they volunteered to serve in the new army, they would be vetted, their background would be checked -- initially it would be highly improbable to find things that would exclude them from service in the military. But as time goes on and more information is gathered from other people about each of the soldiers, you can start to crosscheck things. If a flag went up during the training process, the soldier, the recruit, would then be removed from the training and subsequent action, as appropriate, would be taken.

We began with more than 900 soldiers, we wound up with 700, indicating that in fact we did have success in vetting out people that we had suspicions about, and also those who felt like the military life really wasn't for them anymore.

MR. BORGIDA

Understandable. What would be the future, in terms of this training, in the weeks and months ahead? Seven hundred clearly will not be enough to put together an entire army for Iraq.

COLONEL HUGHES

Correct. This 700-man battalion is going to start what we call collective training, where they start training as squads and platoons and companies, and ultimately as a battalion, conducting some mission appropriate for a battalion-size organization. This unit is charged with helping to defend the borders of Iraq and doing route protection missions to protect convoys that are traversing Iraq, things of that nature.

And as each subsequent cycle of time goes through, we're going to produce three, and then six, more battalions. And by the end of September of next year we will have 12 battalions, approximately 40,000 soldiers, under arms. We hope to then have the Iraqis being part of the decision making process, and they can help us determine do they want to continue increasing the size of the army. And I think most people with any experience there know the army will have to be much bigger than 40,000.

MR. BORGIDA

Colonel Hughes, before we run out of time, I do want to ask you to assess the security situation as you felt it while you were there.

COLONEL HUGHES

Well, initially the security situation was very chaotic as a result of intense efforts by the Saddam loyalists to disrupt anything that we did. We also had problems with the criminals that had been released from the prisons last December. Saddam released 130,000 criminals; many of them were armed. That's not counting the number that we already had on the streets.

Iraq has always been a rather rough-and-tumble kind of country, and so it was rough for us when we got started. But today you're finding that the security situation in Baghdad is improving. In fact, only this weekend the curfew has been cut short by one hour. It's no longer 11:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.; it's now 12 midnight to 4:00.

MR. BORGIDA

Well, hopefully this improvement will continue. And certainly as more and more troops are being trained in Iraq the situation will continue to stabilize. Colonel Paul Hughes with the National Defense University, thank you, sir, for being with us. We appreciate it.

COLONEL HUGHES

Thank you, David.

NEB