Campbell Robertson of the New York Times has adopted a novel strategy to figure out when the Iraqi armed forces will be ready to operate independently: He tried asking actual Iraqi soldiers. Their opinions have gotten lost in the debate over Senator Obama’s call for a U.S. troop withdrawal by 2010 which has won an endorsement of sorts from Prime Minister Maliki. As I’ve said before, the prime minister’s public pronouncements are not the most useful indicator of the readiness of the Iraqi Security Forces. Those who are actually serving on the frontlines have a much better handle on the situation. And what do they say?

“It is 2008,” said Lt. Col. Muhammad Najim Khairi, a young officer in the Third Battalion of the Iraqi Army’s 19th Brigade. “We are too many years behind other countries. We need the coalition forces until 2015.”[..]

Because of his successful approach, he runs one of the few battalions in Diyala that does not have its own dedicated American military transition team.

But Colonel Mahmoud is more pessimistic than most about an Iraqi future without American combat troops.

“Believe me,” he said. “There will be a big disaster.”

Sitting at his headquarters, Colonel Mahmoud sees signs of the future: continuing supply problems and the involvement of Iran in Iraqi affairs. When his troops come across insurgents’ weapons caches, they sometimes find what he says are Iranian weapons that are more up to date than anything in his arsenal.

“The Iranian side will play their game,” he said with a tone of resignation, “once the coalition forces pull out.”

In other words, while the Iraqi security forces are becoming much more capable, they still have a long way to go—and a premature U.S. withdrawal could still jeopardize the great gains of the past eighteen months. That basic fact should not be lost in the euphoria over the growing gains of Iraqi and coalition forces in their battles against terrorists and extremists.