PBS Frontline – Walter Slocombe is former director of national security and defense in the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. organization charged with overseeing Iraq’s reconstruction and transition to democratic rule. He also served in the Pentagon as under-secretary of defense for policy,1994 to 2001. In this interview, he talks about what wasn’t planned for in the aftermath of the war and describes the challenges in training Iraqi security forces following the almost total disappearance of the Iraqi Army. “I wasn’t completely surprised,” he says. “I think the central issue why the army disappeared is that it was a conscript army. Ö The officers lost most of the control of their troops, and sometimes the will to try to control them.”
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