Major General John P. McLaren Jr., formerly the assistant division commander for operations for the 80th Division (Institutional Training), deployed to Iraq in 2005-2006 as commander of the Iraqi Assistance Group. Replacing the 98th Division as trainers and advisors to the new Iraqi Army, they did not wait until they had firm, official notification that the 80th would assume the mission. Planning and training proceeded for mobilization and assumption of the 98th Division's mission regardless of "the on-again, off-again that happened between November 2004 and February 2005," said McLaren. "Our training process would have been much harder had we not done that." He maintains that, while guidance from higher headquarters was adequate for planning, "what we needed was money to allow us to train early. We wound up taking money out of our division budget and redirecting it just to make sure we had folks as ready as they could be." He also notes that information flow between deployed soldiers of the 98th and their counterparts in the 80th was facilitated by email and increased as mobilization dates approached. Upon arrival in Iraq, not all the soldiers in IAG teams had effective turnovers. "It was very dependent upon the personality of the actors involved," according to McLaren. "Some of the problems were guys who just wanted to get out of Dodge as fast as they could. It was specifically me and Brigadier General Richard Sherlock calling folks and saying, 'If you're not happy with the transition, the guy doesn't leave.'" Speaking of how the new IAG teams integrated with the Iraqi Army, he said, "In the Arab culture, it's going to take 30 to 60 days to get them to accept you, no matter what….But once the acceptance period was over, they had been well accepted and everything went pretty smoothly." McLaren proudly states that his soldiers were in all four areas where significant fighting occurred during their yearlong deployment. However, he enumerates difficulties encountered, saying, "As many times as we told them, I still don't think every soldier was ready for the challenges they were going to face in Iraq." Another significant problem was the decidedly volunteer nature of the Iraqi Army. "When I left in July '06," McLaren said, "there wasn't a law on the books that kept anybody in," which meant you had "an army that people could walk away from at any time they wanted without any threat or penalty of law." McLaren closes by praising his reservist soldiers, stating, "I think that was an absolutely phenomenal performance for what we were asked to do within a year….They did magnificent things with the soldiers they mentored and worked with across Iraq, no matter what their job."

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