The Slow March Back to War in Iraq

Months after the Obama administration sent military advisers to Iraq to shore up the country’s splintered army, Baghdad is no closer to mounting an organized offensive against Islamic State, which controls territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria. Pentagon officials say they need at least a year to reorganize the Iraqi army, whose troops fled rather than fight the Sunni Muslim group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. “It’s a mixed picture of competence and capability throughout the Iraqi army, and sometimes even within units,” Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, said at a briefing in October. “This is an army that was not properly resourced, properly trained, properly maintained for three years.”