Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to both our witnesses.
Dr. Momani, I want to carry on with the training side a little. First, I agree with you about the requirement for an air campaign. I also agree with you about “no western boots on the ground”, which means we need regional boots on the ground, which leads to training.
Canada and others were pretty successful in Afghanistan, training the Afghan National Security Forces, so we do have a lot of experience at that. I'm told by people who have been in the region that there are about a division's worth of Iraqi soldiers or Iraqi army who would be relatively easily trained—and that's a relative term—into a cohesive force. That it would take a training force of about 350 or so Canadians or anybody with experience at that to carry that out and in perhaps a period of about six months they would be ready to make a serious contribution.
I'm going to ask a very specific question that you may not be prepared to answer, but do you think that would be something that the Government of Canada should investigate, an additional commitment, a non-combat commitment but an additional commitment to that whole operation?