Audit faults US training of Iraqis

The Boston Globe ^ | October 31, 2006 | Farah Stockman

[A. Pole]

WASHINGTON -- Deteriorating security in Iraq and bureaucratic wrangling between the State Department and the Pentagon have undermined the US government's effort to train provincial governments, according to a report to Congress released yesterday by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

The training, done by "provincial reconstruction teams" of soldiers, aid workers, and diplomats, is meant to coach local authorities in Iraq on how to deliver basic services to their municipalities, and to take over duties from the US-led coalition, such as running elections and making decisions over local budgets.

The teams were considered such a critical part of the Bush administration's strategy to build up the new Iraqi government that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice presided over the inauguration of the first team in Mosul last November.

[...]

The audit said the State Department and the Department of Defense have argued over who is responsible for the security of the teams and who should pay the bill for the programs, noting that the two branches of government still have not come to an agreement on how to work together.

[...]

[Question Liberal Authority]

And yet, the liberal solution to every problem in the world is federal government education and training programs.

[AppyPappy]

Screw the audit. Kill the bad guys.

[A. Pole]

The training, done by "provincial reconstruction teams" of soldiers, aid workers, and diplomats, is meant to coach local authorities in Iraq on how to deliver basic services to their municipalities

There is something insane and creepy in this nation building. Imagine if the foreign soldiers from very different culture and who do not know English were "coaching" Americans how to rule themselves.

[M1Tanker]

Leftist "October Surprise"?

This is it? That's all the left has??

As usual, no solutions from the left, just finger pointing.

[MNJohnnie]

"Deteriorating security in Iraq and bureaucratic wrangling between the State Department and the Pentagon have undermined the US government's effort to train provincial governments, according to a report to Congress released yesterday by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction."

****Snip******

As soon as you read this you knew this author had NO clue at all what they are talking about.

Rather then mindlessly screaming their same nonsenical Neo Isolationists Talking Points over and over maybe the Dinocos MIGHT try addressing the FACTS on Iraq ONE time. It would be a refreshing change from the daily posting of Junk Media drivel. Facts on the ground do NOT validate what they media is claiming about this supposed "report" that wonders of wonders NO one but them seems to have seen

http://icasualties.org/oif/

http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Security_Forces

[A. Pole]

Screw the audit. Kill the bad guys.

Have you seen the Godfather? Imagine country made from thousands of close knit clans. Once you start killing "bad guys" you start multiple vendettas which will run for many years.

[MNJohnnie]

Go read what Green Berets are trained to do. This is EXACTLY the mission the US Army spends an awful lot of time and money training their Special Forces to do.

[A. Pole]

nonsenical Neo Isolationists Talking Points

USA will not be able to run the whole world. But it can go bankrupt in trying.

[MNJohnnie]

Seeing as how the Junk Media has lied to usd about Afghanistan since Nov 2001. Lied about Iraq, Lied about Git mo, Lied about Abu Graibe, Lied about the Downing Street Memo, Lied about Stem Cells, Lied about Katerina, Lied about NSA Surveillance, Lied about Bush National Guard service etc etc etc, I find it utterly unbelievable that there are supposedly "Conservative" Freepers who take every word spewed forth by the Junk Media as Gospel truth.

Did you even bother to stop for even a heartbeat to consider you ONLY have his Junk Journlist's, of dubious intellectual credibility, claims for what is in the report?

Considering how what they claimed about last months NIE Estimate turned out to be total lies, I would expect Freepers to not jump every time the Junk Media screams fire.

Did you bother to consider you have NO idea if this author is actually reporting the TRUTH instead of what they want you to believe the report says?

Out of context claims and deliberate misstatements of fact are the Junk Media's stock in trade these days. Conservatives should be smart enough learn that what the media reports is rarely even 25% of the whole story.

[reformedliberal]

Army Rangers do this, as well, as have done it for a long time. Former Army medic friend of ours did exactly this in the 1960s. It is SOP.

[GOP_1900AD]

This is already old news. Training of Iraqi military has been completely revamped. (CCing Sandrat, who can comment further in great detail)

[reformedliberal]

The difference is that Americans can govern, as opposed to *rule*, themselves. We have been doing so since the founding of this nation. Sometimes, like recently, we have to convince our elected Representatives that they are not our *rulers*. I think a case can be made that the United States invented the concept of self rule and we have been refining it, domestically, since we declared independence from Britain. We have had one Civil War in the interim and even then, we managed a transfer of power via elections, during war time.

People who think we can just go our merry way inside our own borders with no thought to the future of the globe are deceiving themselves. We are helping/coaching an infant sovereign nation in processes we own and which they need. These processes work, regardless of language.

Nation-building beats occupation, partition, or nuking them all back to the Stone Age, IMO. YMMV.

[A. Pole]

Will USA be able to run the whole world?

[reformedliberal]

We do not even attempt to "run the whole world."

We share. We enter into treaties and trade agreements. We educate. We give aid. We demand no tribute. We keep troops on foreign soil to protect, only with the agreement of the host nation. We rent facilities from the host nations and we leave when asked to do so. Usually, after lots of rhetorical bellowing about how awful we are, there is stunned regret when we actually do leave and take our US$ with us. Not to mention the shock when these nations begin to realize that they not only cannot protect themselves, they cannot afford and don't really desire to do so.

"It can go bankrupt trying."
The reports of the insolvency of the United States of America under a capitalistic system have been prematurely predicted so many times in the past 50 years, I have lost count. Yet, here we are: the strongest economy in the world with the strongest volunteer military in the world. As bad as our nanny state with its creeping socialism has become in those 50 years, this nation is still the most free that I can find, anywhere. As much as everyone likes to wring their hands over our financial state, it is our markets and our securities in which the world invests. We have come back from the financial brink many times since 1929, and were we to experience some sort of cataclysmic financial debacle yet again, we are capable of surviving and returning to vibrant growth, precisely because of our people, our philospophy, our individualism and our work ethic.

Our capitalistic, self-governing allies in the Anglosphere and parts of Eastern Europe are all strong and growing while the stability-seeking socialistic bureaucracies of the EU wallow in moribund economies and prate about diplomacy, by which they mean they will sell inferior arms and other products to the developing world in exchange for commodities and cheap labor while backing tyrants and ignoring inequality and injustice. The second there is a threat, everyone demands the USA *do something* and then they proceed to try to micromanage our response while stabbing us in the back in the process. It is the non-responding nations who are trying to rule the entire world, including the USA, via their unelected, bureaucratic, unsustainable idea of a global command economy and toothless international judiciary .

Any comparison of the growth, strength and viability of the competing philosophies between the EU and the USA, as regards jihad &/or communism and the permutations/alliances thereof are invidious to the appeasers, not to the USA.

I wish sometime the carping critics of the United States would lay out workable plans for global peace and prosperity, step up with the ability to project force, spend lives and treasure, while promoting and sustaining dynamic domestic economies and do so in a spirit of cooperation. As an American citizen and taxpayer, I would be quite happy to leave the grunt work of this world to some other capable nation or alliance. Perhaps you have some suggestions as to which nations could manage the task?

[A. Pole]

We are helping/coaching an infant sovereign nation in processes we own and which they need. These processes work, regardless of language.

People are not clay that you can mold according to your wishes. And if you do not know language you are engaging in narcistic dreams. See my tagline.

[facedown]

Have you seen the Godfather?

That was a movie, numbnut.

[A. Pole]

I wish sometime the carping critics of the United States would lay out workable plans for global peace and prosperity,

This is a Puritan Gnostic dream. Such dreams spawned French, Bolshevik, Nazi revolutions, cost countless human lives and caused ocean of suffering.

If you want to improve the world start with your own sins and leave other people alone.

step up with the ability to project force, spend lives and treasure, while promoting and sustaining dynamic domestic economies and do so in a spirit of cooperation.

You did not reform enough Mr. Liberal.

[A. Pole]

That was a movie, numbnut.

This was a very good movie.

[SandRat]

A. Pole, why don't you just do a search on my screen name and read all that I've put up direct from credible source instead of reading the Boston GLUB-GLUB; the baby spinner of the New York SLimes.