Significant problems with Iraqi police training

Too many of Iraq’s new police officers are barely literate, some have shown up for training with criminal records, and the extent of insurgent infiltration in their ranks is largely unknown, according to a new U.S. government report issued Monday.

Inspectors from the State Department and Pentagon, who spent five weeks in Iraq this spring evaluating police training, also found that most of the training had been designed and carried out with too little input from Iraqi leaders.

The inspectors agreed with recommendations from Iraq’s Interior Ministry and international trainers that Iraqis would be better able to screen police recruits than foreign soldiers would. They further suggested that the program should be focused on training police already in the ranks, rather than simply adding more.

The U.S.-led coalition plans to train 135,000 new Iraqi police by the end of 2006. Turning more of the country over to Iraq’s nascent security forces is a cornerstone of the U.S. strategy for an eventual drawdown of American soldiers.

But “this emphasis on numbers overshadows the attention that should be given to the qualitative performance of those trained,” the inspectors found. [...]

“We are preparing them for failure,” the report quoted one unidentified officer as saying. Another said that it is “widely perceived that the police are under-trained and underpaid.” (source)

And yet, today I read that General George Casey stated that the US may be able to “make fairly substantial reductions” in personnel in Iraq in the next year.

What are these people smoking? I suppose that statement is coming just in time to gear up for the next presidential race. It’s more difficult to keep political footing for the Republicans when our sons and daughters are coming home in flag-draped coffins. I suppose they feel that they have to throw a bone to the people.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United States hopes to sharply reduce its forces in Iraq within the next year, its top commander on the ground said on Wednesday.

“I do believe that if the political process continues to go positively, if the developments with the (Iraqi) security forces continue to go as it is going, I do believe we will still be able to make fairly substantial reductions after these elections -- in the spring and summer of next year,” General George Casey said at a briefing with visiting Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. (source)