Iraqi Forces Are Too Weak.

The Christian Science Monitor on May 22 quoted US Brig Gen Steven Salazar as saying of a rescreening of Iraq's 253,000 soldiers: "They're finding about 24% are not qualified... A very small number of them are overage, a little bit bigger number of them would be medically disqualified, and...somewhere - around 15% they're finding - are illiterate".

Salazar, deputy commander of the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq, said a budget crisis was shifting the focus away from new recruitment. He said the rescreening, which had surveyed 46,000 soldiers so far, was undertaken because neither the Iraqi Defence Ministry nor US officials knew who exactly was in the Army.

Although the cash-strapped government had scrapped plans to expand the Army, he said, it did not plan to automatically fire the unqualified soldiers. He added: "I can tell you the leadership's view is that, regardless of how they came in, they've all been involved in the fight for quite some time, and they've served their country well".

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