Posted on 01/04/2009 11:48:11 AM PST by SandRat
FORWARD OPERATING BASE LOYALTY, Iraq – District leaders, administrators and hundreds of students attended the reopening of the Civil Support District Training Center in Baghdad’s Al Karadah district Dec. 30.
Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Multi-National Division – Baghdad, were also in attendance to assist in security measures and meet the center’s administrators in a show of partnership.
The center teaches students vocational skills, offering courses in road repair, generator repair, plumbing, electrical installation, sanitation and landscaping. Renovations took approximately six months to complete.
More than 550 students are currently enrolled at the center. Students must complete a six-month training course in their desired career paths and pass a final written examination in order to graduate.
Senior district leaders said they hope the graduates will find work in their local neighborhoods. After the students complete the six-month course, it is important they find jobs in the district they live in, said Mohammed Al Rubeiy, Karadah district council chief.
“We need to ensure that these students study hard, and we need to help them get jobs in their chosen department,” he said.
Classes range in size from 10 to 100 students and include lectures and hands-on practical exercises. The instructors are all experts in their respective fields and mentor students to help them to become successful and productive members of the workforce.
“I teach students about generator engines and how to keep them working properly,” said Hamed, a generator maintenance teacher. “I also provide students with specific skills of the job in order for them to succeed and guide them to a better future.”
Hazim, 27, is a plumbing student who is looking forward to a new life his education will provide.
“I have no job, and I'm looking for work experience in order to build a better future for myself,” he said “If I listen to my professors and study hard, I know the future is looking good for me.”
Classes for women are scheduled to begin later this year.
George Bush’s genius has been in understanding that this will be a decades-long war of attrition. He has had a consistently measured strategy throughout, and has carefully navigated a middle ground between appeasers and hawks.
Instead of using 300K+ troops from the outset in Iraq, he carefully dispatched troops to recognize the long-term nature of the fight, and added more only when Iraqis were truly ready to take back their country.
We only hear and read of the cost that this war is imposing on our own country and its allies. The terror masters, though, have endured losses and expended resources that are orders of magnitude greater than what we have put forward. And we are slowly but systematically winning. There was a time circa 2006 — which in retrospect will look very brief — when we seemed to be losing ground. But any objective analysis shows that at any given time we are gaining ground on 8 of every 10 fronts.
Were it not for the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb, there would be every reason to be pleased with the cumulative impact that we have had in rooting out terror, and in our long-term prospects. And regarding that bomb, I have to believe that our side is not as vulnerable as it appears. Between the US and the Israelies, I imagine that there are several viable contingency plans, and that we will see them when the time is appropriate.
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