Arming the Iraqis as little as possible

Never forget that the war is for the purposes of the war profiteers.

But there are also good tactical and strategic reasons for not giving the Iraqis a lot of modern weapons and some of them are alluded to in the article. But mostly, the level of corruption that exists in Iraq, like the 3rd world hellhole it is, is such that if we weren't arming them with weapons that they don't want, a good portion of the weapons would wind up in the hands of the militias. Those are the militias that we refuse to dis-arm because it would require a much larger occupation force and heavy casualties for a few days.

Mind you, I'm not being callous about the loss of American lives in Iraq. But I believe that, in the long run, it would save more lives to dis-arm the militias and put guys like Muqtada al-Sadr out of the private army business.