Rumsfeld's Police Secret

[donsu]

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040510&s=cornjones

I n his April 13 press conference, Bush lamented the poor showing of Iraqi security forces in recent clashes with insurgents. "I was disappointed in the performance of some of the troops," he said. "Some of the units performed brilliantly. Some of them didn't. And we need to find out why. If they're lacking in equipment, we'll get them equipment. If there needs to be more intense training, we'll get more intense training. But eventually, Iraq's security is going to be handled by the Iraqi people themselves."

Eventually? Over the past year, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has painted a different picture--of swift and steady progress in building an effective Iraqi security force that could soon take over many security responsibilities. In fact, there hasn't been a single month in the past year that Rumsfeld hasn't pointed to the success of a rapidly developing Iraqi security force as an indicator of the headway the United States has made in Iraq. Let's roll the videotape.

(-snip- here the article lists 12 different dates when Rummmy gave various amounts of Forces and various lies to us americans)


All those months Rumsfeld was cooking the books. In late March the Pentagon released a chart summarizing the numbers of Iraqi security force troops. It tells a different story from the one peddled by Rumsfeld. The summary notes that 75,844 Iraqis were on the payroll as police officers, but only 2,865 were fully qualified and on duty. Another 13,286 were deemed "partially qualified" and supposedly on duty, while 3,245 were in training. Three-fourths of those on the police payroll had received no training. Six months earlier Rumsfeld had declared that 55,000 police had been trained. Not even close. (Despite the small size of the new Iraqi police force, it has been a primary target of the insurgents, who recently mounted attacks on police stations in Basra that claimed the lives of dozens of civilians. And Iraqi police elsewhere have been killed in assaults.)

-snip-

But for a year, Rumsfeld and the Administration puffed up the numbers. When Bush addressed the poor performance of the Iraqi security forces by vowing to supply them with better training and equipment, he was going along with Rumsfeld's sleight of hand, suggesting that there are significant ready-to-roll Iraqi security forces that can be improved. These forces, for the most part, barely exist. At this point, they are only slightly more real than the weapons of mass destruction.
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Bring The Troops Home Now - all of them

to hell with having the largest embassy in the world

we need the largest human aid group in the world to help the Iraqis who we haven't managed to kill yet.

Iraq and Sick are the same word - DU is the killer for generations

why is the bloody hands bushgang still sitting in the white house?