2,000 More M.P.'s Will Help Train the Iraqi Police

[Rose Siding]

American commanders are assigning more than 2,000 Army military police advisers to work side by side with Iraq police officers in one of the most extensive efforts yet to team Americans with uniformed Iraqis.

The effort, a mission that entails significant new security risks for United States forces, is just starting in Baghdad. It will expand to local stations and provincial and district headquarters in all 18 provinces by the end of the month. It greatly increases the size and scope of the current field training by 500 international civilian police advisers and some military police units, American military officials say.
...
But senior commanders, including Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American officer in Iraq, have vowed to make 2006 "the year of the police" in a tacit acknowledgment that corruption, ineptitude and infiltration in the Iraqi police forces stand in the way of any plan by the Americans to draw down troops this year.

For example, American commanders have complained that armed militia have infiltrated the police department in Basra, Iraq's third-largest city. And they are concerned about the recurrence of a police failure like the one in Mosul in November 2004, when a 5,000-man force deserted in the face of a militant uprising, sending Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, into chaos.

........MORE.......

http://nytimes.com/2006/01/16/international/middleeast/16military.html?hp&ex=1137387600&en=41ca297b4cef10bc&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Judi Lynn]

1. US army sending MPs to help train Iraqi police

US army sending MPs to help train Iraqi police
Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:51 AM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United States is assigning more than 2,000 military police advisers to Iraqi police in a stepped-up training program, a spokesman said on Monday.

U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Fred Wellman said advisers would be deployed in teams that would also include civilian police trainers and international police liaison officers.

The teams, which he expected to be active within two to three months, would have oversight of provincial and district police stations in Iraq's 18 provinces.

He denied suggestions that the deployment of extra forces with the Iraqi police was linked to allegations of sectarian militia activity among the police.

A senior U.S. military official said last month the military planned to deploy large numbers of troops to work alongside Iraqi police units as part of a plan to "wrap ourselves around them ... to control them".
(snip/...)

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-01-16T105118Z_01_N15205552_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-POLICE.xml&archived=False

[pokercat999]

2. Good luck; you'll need it.

[0007]

3. ....yawn and next year, the number will raise to 4000 Military Police

training the Iraqis. This is sounding like a broken record.

American officer in Iraq, have vowed to make 2006 "the year of the police"

[MrPrax]

4. Oh please...

let some of the M.P.s be Harper's Tories...!!!!

(damn)