Two years ago, President Bush announced his exit strategy for the U.S. military in Iraq. It was a plan critically dependent upon training Iraqi security forces. "Our strategy can be summed up this way," said the president. "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."But despite a four-year training effort -- costing $15 billion and producing more than 300,000 Iraqi soldiers and national police -- the violence in Iraq has only intensified.
In Gangs of Iraq, a joint production of FRONTLINE and the "America at a Crossroads" series, FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith and producer Marcela Gaviria spent two months embedded with American forces taking a hard look at how the training effort is faring. Their report draws on interviews with U.S. advisers and military commanders charged with training a new security force, including Gen. David Petraeus, and interviews with Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.