Using Cold War era US equipment coupled with the scrapping of the Soviet massed tank battle doctrine, the Iraqi Army of 2008 looks a lot like the US Army of 1989.
Ever sat down and wanted to figure out an army from scratch. Looking for the new TOE for the Iraqi army? Try Here at the Long War Journal. You see the break down of the 61 brigades-sized units organised into 15 divisions and a Special Operations Force. These are broken down into a large (Russian MVD style) Ministry of Interior-controlled armed force of 370,000 men and the Iraqi Army proper with some 208,000 men under arms.
It should be noted that in 1989- at the time of the end of the Cold War -the US Army also had some 480,000 men. These were organised in 18 divisions and many of those were not up to strength. The Regan-era green machine relied on a complicated system of 'round-out' brigades drawn from the National Guard to flesh out those 18-odd divisions to full strength. (For example, the 155th Mechanized Brigade of the Mississippi Army National Guard would have mobilized and formed the third brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division of the active army.) This was shown to be unrealistic as the round-out brigades, which were held in a higher readiness than the rest of the Guard, would still require 180-days of training before being able to deploy overseas.
So the US military has resurrected the Iraqi army as a landforce the same size or larger than its own largest size since the end of conscription. This is appropriate considering that the Iraqis are wearing the same style Kevlar helmets, chocolate chip desert BDU uniforms, and firing the same M16A2 rifles that the US Army had in 1989.
