General George W. Casey, Jr., was born in Sendai, Japan, on July 22, 1948, into a military family. He was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of Infantry from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1970. His father, Major General George William Casey, was killed in Vietnam that same year while commanding the 1^stCavalry Division.

Operation Iraqi Freedom Chronology

The training and equipping of the Iraqi security forces was a significant accomplishment, especially because the ISF were organized, trained, equipped, and then put directly into combat operations with our forces. The transition team and partnership programs enabled us not only to complete the training and equipping of the ISF in an active combat environment, but also to instill in them the qualities of a professional military operating under civilian leadership.

The quantitative growth of the ISF is shown below, from approximately 90,000 trained and equipped military, police, and border forces in July 2004 to over 325,000 by the end of January 2007, a growth of over 3.5 times.