Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Blaise Cornell-d'Echert was involved in the initial creation of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team (CMATT) in Iraq starting in July 2003. In this interview, he talks about how the initial structuring of the Iraqi military was deliberately not a copy of the US military, taking into account the legacy of British training and Soviet-style doctrine. Consequently, the British, Australians and Polish all had important roles in the shaping of the initial plan. He notes that CMATT was subordinate to Administrator Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority, not Combined Joint Task Force 7 (CJTF-7), and argues that this caused enormous problems because of division of effort. Cornell-d'Echert specifically points out that as CMATT was trying to stand up a new Iraqi army, CJTF-7 was creating the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC), which was contrary to CMATT's vision of civil-military relationships in the future Iraq by creating a parallel organization competing with the army and police, by strengthening tribal interests and - when the ICDC was incorporated into the army - by diluting the allegiance and professionalism of Iraq's only national organization. He states that CMATT viewed American trainers as crucial to the new Iraqi Army, saying "These are guys who have to live with the units and they have to be skilled in what they're going to be teaching the units to do. They can't be run-of-the-mill guys who just happened to be available to do this." He describes the request for forces to man the advisory effort as "dying a slow death at CENTCOM. They were arguing over every point. I think CENTCOM was thinking that the ICDC was where the effort needed to go." In the end, he said, "It got kluged together and what we ended up with was not what we were looking for in terms of either the advisory teams or the training support." Coordination with CJTF-7 went poorly as new Iraqi units completed training because, according to Cornell-d'Echert, "They had to have advisory teams to go with them, because how else would they call for medical evacuations or get their logistics support - all these things you have to provide them as their higher headquarters. But CJTF-7 didn't want to do it. They were incredibly resistant - and I think we're still paying the price today." He concludes his interview by saying that the fundamental challenge was to get anyone to treat the training and advisory effort seriously, and that he has been disturbed by the widespread lack of foresight.

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