The deadly attack on an Iraqi police station in Fallujah last Saturday revealed problems in US military support for newly trained Iraqi security services there, the top US military officer said on Thursday.
General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the bold raid, which left at least 25 people dead, including four attackers, had prompted the two top commanders of US forces in Iraq, General John Abizaid and Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, to review how US troops respond when Iraqi forces come under fire.
"It's tactical-level stuff that needs to be worked on the battlefield, and not here in Washington," Myers said at a breakfast meeting with reporters. "We can do better."
Myers continued: "It is never the intention of the US military to leave the Iraqi forces out there on the end of a limb without helping them. Whether we do that well all the time is another issue."
Myers' comments marked a rare admission of flaws in the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces, and in providing quick backup when Iraqis get into trouble.
Senior US commanders say that having Iraqi forces assume more responsibility for security and stability in their country is a linchpin in the Pentagon's long-term strategy to reduce US forces in Iraq.
But many of the Iraqi police and militia now operating independently or in tandem with US forces still lack basic equipment, like radios and patrol cars. Some of those Iraqi forces have expressed fear that they will be outgunned by loyalists to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein if US troops leave prematurely.
Pentagon officials elaborated on Myers' remarks in interviews and a news conference later in the day. They said the Saturday attack -- in which heavily armed attackers moved in from four directions, and which was coupled with a simultaneous attack on a civil defense headquarters about a mile away -- revealed no backup communications for the Iraqi police once their phone lines were cut. It also showed the lack of weapons and ammunition in Iraqi militia units; the officers had to request arms from US forces in the middle of an intense 15-minute gun battle.
"Why were they in the position of needing weapons and ammo?" said one senior military officer.
US officials are also looking at how to hasten the response of special teams of soldiers in Iraq that are on standby for emergencies.
"In each one of these situations, just like this one, we'll do a review of the operation and see what we could have done better to make sure that this does not occur in the future," Brigadier-General David Rodriguez, a Pentagon spokesman, said.
Two men captured in the attack were from the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a militia organization akin to the US National Guard, Rodriguez said, a factor that has added to concerns that the synchronized strike was an inside job.
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