“We Need Their Stinking Badges”
I haven’t really reported on these allegedly “independent” commission reports coming in, because the reality is, the notion that a bunch of domestic beard pullers with little or no time on the ground are going to have a substantially authoritative voice as to whats going on, and what should be done, in Iraq, is laughable. People stateside want to believe they “know” the realities of Iraq, they want to have a sense of control of the facts, to “be on top of it”. Well, they can’t be. And even to have an understanding of “where things are” doesn’t mean one has an understanding of how to realistically get them to “where they need to be”.
Anyway, here’s a piece from the D.C.-based Left Wing propaganda sheet, the Washington Post on the military’s response to one of the beard pullers’ recommendations:
U.S. Military Rejects Call To Disband Iraqi Police
Senior U.S. military commanders in Iraq rejected an independent commission’s recommendation yesterday to disband the 25,000-strong Iraqi national police force, saying that despite sectarian influences the force is improving and that removing it would create dangerous security vacuums in key regions of the country.
“We are way past the point where we just fire everyone and start over,” said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, who commands U.S. military forces in a large swath of central Iraq, where he seeks to have five more police battalions assigned.
The report released yesterday by the 20-member Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, headed by retired Marine Gen. James Jones, described the national police force as riddled with sectarianism and corruption. The force, which is 85 percent Shiite Muslim, is the only branch of the Iraqi security forces that the commission deemed beyond repair.
In congressional hearings yesterday, lawmakers focused less on the report’s details than on its broad proposals, which they used to buttress their positions on the Iraq war. Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, emphasized the commission’s recommendation to redirect U.S. troops toward protecting Iraq’s borders and key infrastructure in early 2008, while turning over security to Iraqi forces, despite their deficiencies. “It is long overdue that we cut the cords of dependence,” Levin said.
Presidential candidates from both parties seized on the report to battle over timelines for troop withdrawal.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked Jones if a deadline for withdrawal would be in the interest of the United States. “Senator, I’ll speak for myself on this, but I think deadlines can work against us,” Jones replied. “And I think a deadline of this magnitude would be against our national interest.”
But Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said a deadline would force Iraqi leaders to reconcile their differences. “If we take away deadlines, we take away benchmarks, we take away timelines,” she said. “What is the urgency that will move them to act?”
Overall, the report painted a mixed view of Iraq’s security forces. It said the Iraqi Defense Ministry is increasingly capable and the Iraqi army has made measurable progress, although it will not be ready to take over domestic security from U.S. forces in the next 12 to 18 months. In contrast, it called the Interior Ministry “dysfunctional” and unable to control tens of thousands of its armed members. The national police was singled out as “beyond repair,” testified commission member Charles H. Ramsey, the former D.C. police chief.
Yet the senior U.S. commanders said they neither expect Iraq’s Shiite-led government to dismantle the national police nor think that the government should do so. Recruiting and training a new force would present major hurdles and would not necessarily prevent its reinfiltration by sectarian officers, they said.
Instead, the commanders said the sheer demand for Iraqi forces to back this year’s increased number of U.S. troops — now at 168,000 — makes it unfeasible to do away with the national police, a paramilitary force led by a mix of police and army officers deployed throughout the country.
“The surge is not only U.S. but is also Iraqi. All of the national police units are committed forces as of today,” said one U.S. military commander in Baghdad. “To pull them out of their sectors to send them to retraining is very difficult, as you can’t just leave hard-won secure areas alone and expect the enemy not to move back,” said the commander, who was not authorized to speak on the record.
That view was echoed by regional U.S. commanders, who said they are short of Iraqi forces and seek to have more — not fewer — national police deployed in their areas.
Lynch and the other senior military officials said national police units vary greatly in their reliability and degree of sectarian infiltration. “Some police are good, and some are totally corrupt and are making sectarian decisions,” Lynch said in a phone interview from Iraq.
Two brigades of Iraqi national police operate in Lynch’s area. One of them recently completed a process known as “rebluing,” in which they are retrained and often given new leadership. “They are great . . . doing what we need them to do,” Lynch said. But he said “there are other national police in the area who are purely doing things for sectarian reasons, and the local citizens see them as the enemy.”
U.S. officials said that Iraqi leaders know the national police have committed sectarian abuses and that the Iraqi government, with U.S. military backing, has fired all nine of the national police brigade commanders, 18 of 27 battalion commanders and at least 800 others over the past eight months. This reform process is to be completed in October, when units will begin rotating through a higher level of training by the Italian carabinieri.
National police “have become better disciplined, and there are fewer reports of misconduct or sectarianism,” said a senior military commander in Baghdad. But though overt sectarianism has decreased, it will take longer to identify those still engaged in such abuses secretly, he said.
In Sunni enclaves of Baghdad, such as Doura and Ameriyah, the national police are widely feared by residents, who accuse the police of abducting Sunnis from checkpoints, shooting them without reason and terrorizing the population.
“We feel surrounded. We can’t go out of Doura,” said a local taxi driver who complained about Shiite militias and abuses by the national police.
“The national police come here and detain people for no reason,” he said. “They aren’t here now because you are here,” he told a U.S. soldier patrolling the area.
Be respectful of others and their opinions. Inflammatory remarks and inane leftist drivel will be deleted. It ain’t about free speech, remember you’re in a private domain. My website, my prerogative.
If you can't handle using your real email address, don't bother posting a comment.
I sure hope the good general gets in those bastards faces (democrates) and tells them how unrealistic they are, and how stupid they are, and to quit politicizing this war..we’re on the road to victory, for Gods sake just let us do our job and be patient, we’re almost there.
September 7th, 2007 at 3:35 amThe bastards know any good news from Iraq is bad news for them…frikking morons stink to high heaven
But Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said a deadline would force Iraqi leaders to reconcile their differences. “If we take away deadlines, we take away benchmarks, we take away timelines,” she said. “What is the urgency that will move them to act?”
-oh it could be that Iraqis are tired of violence and having their country used as a battle ground from a variety of outside forces?
Just another example of elitist condescending thought that is the hallmark of the d’rats
September 7th, 2007 at 4:44 amBut Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said a deadline would force Iraqi leaders to reconcile their differences. “If we take away deadlines, we take away benchmarks, we take away timelines,” she said. “What is the urgency that will move them to act?”
This shows her absolute inability to understand that neither she, nor anyone else can ‘benchmark’ progress when it comes to a subjugated people being freed. It is their time to make their laws and their country be what THEY want it to be. It will take us years to fight a ’stability’ war. We need to focus more on empowering those who will stand tall with integrity and morality and stand by their own form of a constitution whatever they decide it to be. (I use ‘they’ as a descriptive word for the Iraqi people.) The Iraqi people deserve to decide what benchmarks are set for themselves, not by some pompous know it all assbag like a Washington Dumbocrat.
One thing that the peacenicks forget, there are no others who despise war more than a soldier who has participated in it. I would trade none of my experiences no matter what the reward. I do believe that there is evil in the world that needs to be eradicated, and eradicated with prejudice.
September 7th, 2007 at 5:26 amHistory–dare not to remember. Dare to repeat. Didn’t disbanding the Iraqi Army contribute to the insurgency? Didn’t the DemCong complain about that being a mistake? Wouldn’t disbanding the police create similar?
In making the point, I’m not positive REAL LEADERS agreed on the outcome of immediately disbanding the Iraqi Army, so don’t slam me if I am wrong.
September 7th, 2007 at 6:34 am“But Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said a deadline would force Iraqi leaders to reconcile their differences. “If we take away deadlines, we take away benchmarks, we take away timelines,” she said. “What is the urgency that will move them to act?””
What a damn idiot. Listen, Rotten Klinton, the urgency of these people lies in the fact that if they don’t fight, they and/or their families die. That’s their urgency.
And you madam fuckstick are one of the loudest cruds speaking about the earlier disbanding of the Iraqi police and Army at the outset of this war.
You’d make a good irhabi Hillary. You speak out of both sides of your pie-hole too.
September 7th, 2007 at 10:18 amThank God our allies during the Revolutionary War/ War of Independence, however you prefer to reference it, didn’t set any timelines for our founding fathers to work the kinks out. If some sotries I read and some of the books I have read are true, it actually took about 20, 25 years to get this country working half way smooth. Then it ran more or less okay until the late 1960’s and the emergence of the new Democrat Party, and it has been going downhill quite a bit since then. Perhaps if people realized the great JFK would be a member of the Republican Party today, that would help shift the tide away form the communisitc, socialist bastards that are trying to drag this country into further ruin, rather than letting it attain it’s former glory, but the only way to do that is to expel, shoot, hang or imprison all ot the traitors, although not necessarily in that order…
September 7th, 2007 at 11:34 am[…] “We Need Their Stinking Badges” — Pat Dollard […]
September 7th, 2007 at 12:21 pm