Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a decorated commander during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, visited U.S. officials in Iraq recently and came away impressed with the spirit and effectiveness of American troops there, but not so sanguine about the interagency support they receive.

"The morale, fighting effectiveness and confidence of U.S. combat forces continue to be simply awe-inspiring," McCaffrey asserts in an April 25 "academic report" to colleagues at the U.S. Military Academy, obtained by InsideDefense.com. The retired general is an adjunct professor of international affairs at the West Point, NY, school.

On the other hand, U.S. interagency "support for our strategy in Iraq is grossly inadequate," he writes. "A handful of brilliant, courageous, and dedicated Foreign Service Officers have held together a large, constantly changing, marginally qualified, inadequately experienced U.S. mission," he added, referring to the diplomatic apparatus based in Baghdad.

His overall assessment: Iraq "will remain in a serious crisis" during the next 24 months -- and stabilizing the country could take another seven years. However, progress in training Iraqi forces could allow the Pentagon to draw down most U.S. combat troops in that nation in three to five years, according to the report.

McCaffrey, who commanded the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's forces in the first Gulf War and later served as head of U.S. Southern Command, was in Iraq and next-door Kuwait from April 13 to 20.

The retired general spent much of that time in discussions and briefings with an array of U.S. officials, including Army Gen. George Casey, the Multi-National Force-Iraq chief, and Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who runs Multi-National Corps-Iraq, according to the report. He also met with Italian and Australian officers to get further information on coalition activities.

Later that month, McCaffrey delivered his report to Col. Mike Meese and Col. Cindy Webb, the head and deputy head of the academy's social sciences department, respectively, and told them he looks forward to “doing a faculty seminar [for the department] at your convenience in the Fall semester," the document states.

The report's blunt assessment of operations in Iraq come as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld continues to take flak from a handful of his former commanders who have made headlines by calling for him to resign for his handling of the war in that country. McCaffrey, who oversaw drug control policy in the Clinton administration, has not publicly associated himself with that group, although he has been critical of the Bush administration's handling of the conflict.

Speaking last month with the Chicago Tribune, the retired general called Rumsfeld, who continues to have White House support, a "patriot" and "brilliant," but added that "his judgment is terrible, and he has gotten his president and the country into trouble."

In his academic report, McCaffrey offers some good news about the still-developing Iraqi army.

The force is "real, growing, and willing to fight," he writes. "They now have lead action of a huge and rapidly expanding area and population. The battalion-level formations are in many cases excellent -- most are adequate."

But here's the bad news: The Iraqi troops are "very badly equipped with only a few light vehicles, small arms, most with body armor and one or two uniforms," McCaffrey says. The force also lacks "decent" communications gear and air support for transport and strike missions.

Iraq's defense and interior ministries are becoming more competent -- under the care of Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Multi-National Security Transition Command chief who also met with McCaffrey -- but corruption in the agencies "will require several years of patient coaching and officer education," the report states.

McCaffrey also is worried about eroding U.S. public support for efforts in Iraq, although he writes that "the American people understand that we must not fail or we risk a 10-year disaster of foreign policy in the vital Gulf Oil Region.”

"U.S. public opinion may become increasingly alienated by Iraqi ingratitude for our sacrifice on their behalf . . . and by astonishingly corrupt and incompetent Iraqi management of their own recovery," he adds.

Problems in Iraq could be more easily addressed with better interagency support for U.S. forces and other personnel, according to the report.

"The U.S. influence on the Iraqi national and regional government has been extremely week," McCaffrey states. "In Iraq, nothing is possible without carefully managed relationships between the U.S. officials and their Iraqi interlocutors. Trust between people is the prerequisite and basis of progress for this deeply Arab culture.

"The other U.S. agencies of government such as Justice, [the Department of Homeland Security], Agriculture and Transportation are in Iraq in small numbers for too short time periods," he adds. Further, "bureaucratic nonsense" among personnel working for those departments "is taking place in the context of a war costing the American people $7 billion a month -- and a battalion of soldiers and Marines killed or wounded a month."

Meanwhile, U.S. Central Command and the U.S. mission in Iraq are running out of economic reconstruction funds, the report states. More money is needed because "unemployment is a bigger enemy" in that country than insurgent forces, McCaffrey writes.

"Iraq cannot sustain the requisite economic recovery without serious U.S. support," he continues. "The [allies] are not going to help. They will not fulfill their pledges."

The situation is "perilous" and "uncertain" but “far from hopeless," the report states. "The U.S. Armed Forces are a rock. This is the most competent and brilliantly led military in a tactical and operational sense that we have ever fielded."

U.S. envoy to Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad and the military leadership at Central Command are doing a "superb" job at the strategic level, according to McCaffrey, and the Iraqi political system, although "fragile," is beginning to "play a serious role in the debate over the big challenges facing the Iraqi state."

Progress in building support for a "national unity" Iraqi government is crucial to success in that country, the report states.