Posted on 01/31/2007 9:08:35 AM PST by RWB Patriot
WASHINGTON - Training the police is as important to stabilizing Iraq as building an effective army there, but the United States has botched the job by assigning the wrong agencies to the task, two members of the Iraq Study Group said Wednesday.
"The police training system has not gone well," said former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the bipartisan commission.
For a second day, a key Republican directly challenged President Bush to do more than pay "lip service" to this and other recommendations on how to resolve the troubled conflict in Iraq.
"As a nation we'd be much better off if the executive branch were not so insular," said Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa. "I'd think the executive branch would be well advised to do more than have a meeting and a news conference to give in-depth consideration to what is being proposed here."
According to the report, co-authored by Hamilton and former Attorney General Edwin Meese, the U.S. erred by first assigning the task of shaping the judicial system in a largely lawless country to the State Department and private contractors who "did not have the expertise or the manpower to get the job done."
In 2004, the mission was assigned to the Defense Department, which devoted more money to the task. But department officials also were insufficiently trained for the job, Hamilton and Meese said.
As a result, Iraq has little if any on-the-street law enforcement personnel or a functioning judicial system free of corruption, they said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
*sigh* Everything in the world is our fault. There's no problem with the Iraqi culture of corruption that's thousands of years old -- Americans are the only ones at fault.
What a headline. No bias there, huh?
We will see more stories like this (look how the NYT spun the killing of hundreds of terrorists into a story about problems with the Iraqi troops) and how the construction projects are a failure, and the money is all being stolen, and whatever else they can find or fabricate.
The media is intent on driving us out of Iraq and they will not give up.
Yet the AP's assistance to the terrorists has been very successful.
LOL, yeah 'key Republican'! Very funny. AP certainly has a sense of humor.
Lee Hamilton was recently hired by Sandy Berger's company - and of course, it was ignored by the media.
Bottom line, I would be very suspect of ANYTHING Lee Hamilton says from now on, considering who he's working for.
I really dislike the tone of this article. Unfortunately, I'm afrad the AP also has a good point -- the State Dept really hasn't been up to the difficult task of helping build a new police force.
No, no, no! I'm all for it. Arlen Specter & Lee Hamilton should go immediately to Iraq & work on re-structuring the police & judicial systems. With any luck...
In some parts of Iraq, some police might not be trained well, but, in other parts, the training has gone very well. Hamilton and the liberal journalists don't want us to know about the good work that Americans have done there.
I was a navy hospital corpsman, and I lived near Baghdad, in a marine infantry battalion, Sept. 2004-Mar. '05. I helped doctors and nurses treat sick and injured marines and soldiers. The main task of my battalion was training Iraqi police officers and soldiers, so that they could defend their country without American help. The C.O. said that they made a lot of progress.
Whenever an American dies in Iraq, the liberal reporters tell us about it, but they don't tell us about the number of insurgents who were killed by Americans. When my battalion arrived in Iraq, we had about 1,200 people. 13 of the marines died, and they killed about 250 Iraqis. My battalion caught and questioned about 1,200 detainees, and many of them gave important information that helped save Americans and Iraqi civilians. The journalists could find that information, if they wanted to look for it. The journalists don't want to do their jobs well, or they want to hide important information from us.
Some countries have couch potatoes, the US has policy cockroaches. Policy cockroachesd come out of the woodwork to become second-guessers and armchair quarterbacks for any move that Bush makes.
Frankly, I'd prefer the couch potatoes.
Thank you for your service and God Bless you.
Marine Mom
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.