When the 98th Division (Institutional Training) deployed to Iraq in 2004-2005, Major General James R. Helmly was the chief of Army Reserve and commanding general of United States Army Reserve Command. In this interview, focusing on the 98th's deployment and conduct of its Iraqi Army training and advisory mission and related larger issues, Helmly relates how early on he saw a need to reconstitute the Iraqi forces, a chronic shortage of US Special Forces to train them, and thought to himself, "Why can't we use our table of distribution and allowances-organized institutional training divisions and training support divisions?" The biggest problem he encountered in developing this idea was actually resident in his own staff. "That is, they kept coming back with the schoolbook answer. So we had a 'Come to Jesus' meeting one day and I slammed the door and said to them, 'Goddamn it! Let me make it abundantly clear what we're going to do….You could sort of see the eyes opening on these guys and they finally understood." After the concept was briefed and accepted, Helmly states that another group of problems arose from "this bastardized system of request for forces (RFF). Instead of being given a mission or a task with commander's intent and then allowing the units to generate the capability," he explained, "we went to a bastardized thing off the back of some sloppy envelope for an RFF that was frankly just very cumbersome. It really tied our hands in terms of the flexibility of putting together a task organized unit of the 98th." As the deployment of the 98th to Iraq proceeded, its employment varied considerably from his original concept. According to Helmly, "My original initiative was to use them in a training base capacity inside a foreign army…. What occurred, though, was that many of the 98th became embedded trainers inside Iraqi units." Even so, he added, "the 98th soldiers did all very well and I admire and respect them greatly for that." Helmly also notes that Iraq has focused the US Army on details, that the needs of "the long war" have been neglected, that the current method of foreign military sales and assistance is broken, and that an organization dedicated to training foreign militaries needs to exist. What's more, personal agendas and institutional inertia contribute to these challenges. "The Army's post-mobilization training program and the overall training of Reserve Components were broken, and are still broken," Helmly said, and he closes the interview by stating that the mobilization process needs to made smoother and that there needs to be a better appreciation of the capabilities of the Reserves.

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