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WASHINGTON, Sept. 21, 2007 – Violence in Baghdad has been cut in half, thanks to a massive influx of new Iraqi police officers, a top U.S. military advisor said today. “Along with the surge of U.S. forces is also the surge of Iraqi police,” Brig. Gen. David Phillips told online journalists and “bloggers” during a conference call from Baghdad. As deputy commanding general of the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, Phillips helped stand up the Baghdad Police Academy in January 2004. Yesterday, he watched 744 brand new officers graduate from that academy. “A community (in) which in the past we...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19, 2006 -- The improvements in the Iraqi security forces over the next six months will be dramatic, Army Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey said today. Dempsey, the commander of Multinational Security Transition Command Iraq, spoke via teleconference from Baghdad. He said the Iraqi security forces will reach their manning goals this month. But the quality of the soldiers and police will increase as more intensified training kicks in. “There are lead times in procurements and things and even in training, and those things will come to fruition here in the first six months of this next year,”...

WASHINGTON, May 26, 2006 – The U.S. military footprint in Europe is significantly changed from just a decade ago. Gone are dozens of American enclaves -- some self-contained communities complete with schools, shopping centers and housing complexes -- located throughout Western Europe, but primarily in Germany. In their place soon will be small regional training centers in Romania and Bulgaria, through which U.S. combat brigades will rotate on training and regional-security-cooperation missions. Transformation has been a dramatic process in U.S. European Command. In an interview yesterday with the Pentagon Channel and American Forces Press Service, Army Gen. William E. "Kip"...

One of the smartest ways to scale back the crushing burden of San Diego's municipal pension plan is to contract out more city services. Outsourcing would shift the workers who provide such services to the private sector, removing them from the enormously expensive municipal retirement system, which currently threatens to bankrupt San Diego. Potentially, several thousand workers among a total work force of nearly 11,000 could be removed from the city's payroll, causing a dramatic reduction in pension costs. Mayor Jerry Sanders' financial recovery plan includes outsourcing as a key component. He should pursue this strategy aggressively, not only to...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!