October 14, 2004
BOUGHT OR COERCED?:
NATO agrees to send advisers to Iraq: Will train local security forces (Bryan Bender, October 14, 2004, Boston Globe)
In a diplomatic victory for the United States, NATO officials agreed yesterday to send hundreds of military advisers to Iraq this year to train local security forces as part of a new task force that could eventually grow to 3,000 personnel. Trainers from France, Germany, and other nations that bitterly opposed the US-led invasion are expected to join the effort.At a meeting in Romania, the alliance -- which now has about 50 advisers in Iraq -- accepted US and Iraqi pleas to help speed up the training of Iraqi security forces in advance of Iraqi elections planned for January.
More than 300 trainers will begin staffing a new training academy outside Baghdad in the coming months, officials said. They said initial personnel from Denmark and Norway, which both opposed the war, could start to arrive by the end of November.
Officials at the talks said the agreement also paves the way for Germany and France, who were among the most vociferous opponents of the war, to send noncombat personnel to Iraq to assist in the training mission, although no timetable was set for their participation.
The advisers will be under the command of US Lieutenant General David Patraeus.
"We have an agreement that those trainers will go into Iraq by the end of the year," US Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns told reporters after the alliance's defense ministers completed the first of two days of talks at a mountain resort in Poiana Brasov, Romania.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that trainers and the additional forces needed to protect them must be on the ground in Iraq "as soon as possible. Speed is of the essence here. This is what the Iraqis want."
So, in Senator Kerry's view does NATO now go from being a vital ally, that wouldn't help, to a phony ally, now that it is fulfilling its obligations? Posted by Orrin Judd at October 14, 2004 9:55 AM
Kerry probably considers General Petraeus to be one of the 'coerced and bribed'.
Posted by: jim hamlen at October 14, 2004 10:29 AMOrrin: I don't understand how NATO has any obligations regarding Iraq -- after all, it is only a mutual defense treaty of the member states.
Posted by: jd watson at October 14, 2004 11:45 AMKerry is firmly convinced that our foreign policy should be dictated to us by those jumped-up cannibals at the UN and by those self-dealing slimeballs in the Elysee Palace.
Posted by: Bart at October 14, 2004 12:03 PMjd:
Moral obligations--British and American pilots enforcing intenational law were being attacked on a daily basis.
Posted by: oj at October 14, 2004 2:09 PM"Officials at the talks said the agreement also paves the way for Germany and France, who were among the most vociferous opponents of the war, to send noncombat personnel to Iraq to assist in the training mission, although no timetable was set for their participation."
A time table will be announced as soon as they determine what will be in it for them financiALLY. That's the nuanced meaning of ally.
Posted by: genecis at October 14, 2004 2:18 PMjd:
NATO is now a large bureaucracy in search of a mission. Agreeing to participate in Iraq gives NATO a future.
Posted by: Fred Jacobsen (San Fran) at October 14, 2004 3:23 PMFred, I have to question that. While NATO may be able to do something useful occasionally, it is still an alliance without a rationale and seems to be evolving into another political/social multilateral layer through which endless discussion and much prestige are expended for very little return.
1955: NATO is a mutual defense pact among respectably armed North American and Western European nations designed to protect against Soviet aggression in Europe and prepare a collective repsonse to it.
2004: NATO is a maybe-expanding, maybe-not grouping of North American and European countries with no commonly agreed upon adversaries, foreign policies or strategic outlooks. It is highly unlikely any of them feel politically bound to defend one another. Most of its members have been slashing defense budgets for years. Several of its members openly seek the weakening of others and are only dragged kicking and screaming into fulfilling minor tasks in the war on terror for PR purposes.
Posted by: Peter B at October 14, 2004 5:23 PM