From 2003 through 2005, when the plan for using elements of the 98th Division (Institutional Training) to train the new Iraqi Army was developed and executed, Brigadier General Richard Sherlock was its assistant division commander for operations. He would also serve as the first commanding general of the Iraqi Assistance Group. Although the initial concept for employing the 98th - a Reserve outfit headquartered in Rochester, New York - was a training mission, it quickly changed when the division's survey team reached Iraq. According to Sherlock, "As soon as we got to Iraq and started to look at what the actual mission was, it was immediately apparent that that was not the case. They would, in fact, be embedded trainers with the units; but they would also be the same folks who would need to stay with the units and be embedded advisors as well." As Sherlock explained, "The reason the concept changed from being just trainers to being trainers and advisors is that, in the Iraqi culture, everything is done on a personal relationship basis." One early challenge of the survey group was to lay out the complete mission requirements. "We deconflicted all five versions of the documents - the requests for forces and the joint manning documents," he said, "and we took out all the places where they had redundancy, where they had multiple requests for the same thing or where they had disconnects." In the end, the 98th provided military transition teams to two Iraqi division headquarters, seven brigades and 24 battalions, as well as robust staff support for the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team, the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, and Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq. Sherlock states that the skill sets from an institutional training division fit the training mission very well and, what's more, that they were a particularly good fit for those Iraqi units early in their maturity. In addition, Sherlock said, the way the 98th was deployed to Iraq, broken into small groups of soldiers without regard to unit integrity or chain of command, was a real mistake and needs to be closely reexamined for future deployments. He closes his interview by saying, for future officers in similar circumstances, "My advice is that you can't focus in on your niche of the Army. You have to be able to understand what it means to be a soldier, what it means to be an Army unit." For reservists especially, "You have to make sure that your unit and soldiers understand that mindset, that they are as much a deployment asset as anybody else in our Army."

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