The battalion, according to the Pentagon, was downgraded from "level one" to "level two" after a recent quarterly assessment of its capabilities.

 

"Level one" means the battalion is able to fight on its own; "level two" means it requires support from U.S. troops; and "level three" means it must fight alongside U.S. troops.

 

full story

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/02/24/...rity/index.html

See, this is what happens when you're watching Family Guy DVD commentaries...Kip beats me to posting things.

 

Yeah...so on it's own this is a bad sign. But on the other hand, if there was a simultaneous increase in level 2 or level 3 ready units compared to level 4, that would still be a positive sign, despite the fact that category 1 has declined from 3 to 0 in about a year.

 

The problem is, the Administration has decided to use the moniker "In the fight", which has no technical definition, in order to come up with some statistic which makes it sound like things are improving, without telling us what "in the fight" means.

 

So, on it's face, this is a bad sign, but it's possible that this could be a pointless bad sign...if the decline in readiness of those 3 units were associated with a rise in the average readiness level, which is something we can't evaluate based on the data we have, since all the administration has given us is the pointless phrase "in the fight".

Ok, so to answer some of my own questions from last night...CNN

 

According to the congressionally mandated Iraq security report released Friday, there are 53 Iraqi battalions at level two status, up from 36 in October. There are 45 battalions at level three, according to the report.

 

Overall, Pentagon officials said close to 100 Iraqi army battalions are operational, and more than 100 Iraq Security Force battalions are operational at levels two or three. The security force operations are under the direction of the Iraqi government.

 

So even if the number of level 1 units has dropped, there has been a decent increase in the number of level 2 ready units.

 

The only part that worries me is This

 

The formula estimates that for every three Iraqi battalions and one Iraqi brigade headquarters achieving a readiness rating of level two, a U.S. battalion can be dropped. A level two rating, on a scale of one to four, indicates that a unit is able to take the lead in operations but still requires some U.S. military support.

So the number of level 2 units is up almost 50% from October, yet there are still over 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, which means that none of those drawdowns we talked about in December have happened yet.

But victory is just around the corner!