Sunday, May 13, 2012

Iraqi Police Needs Support, Al Qaeda VS Tehran?

"Apparently Rick Santorum endorsed Mitt Romney last night very late via email. That just makes Santorum one of the 10 million guys ashamed of what he did late last night on his computer." – Conan O'Brien
"President Obama came out with approval of same-sex marriage. He said that over the years, he has been going through an evolution on the issue. That makes opponents on the far right doubly angry. They don't believe in gay marriage OR evolution." – Jimmy Kimmel
"Michele Bachamnn has announced she is now also a citizen of Switzerland. What better way to protest a president you think is socialist than become a citizen of a country with a socialist philosophy and a mandated health care plan." – Jay Leno


A program initiated by the State Department, to train Iraqi police officers may be on the chopping block. And it should have happened a long time ago. There are so many things wrong with the history of this program, that it illustrates everything that Americans do wrong in foreign countries. The current version of the program has cost us over $500 million since last October, all without an accounting of where the money was spent. It sure didn't go to the 100 retired US police officers contracted to do the training and end up sitting on their butts all day because its been deemed too dangerous for them to go outside and visit the police stations. Their role has been diminished to making Powerpoint presentations that the Iraqis see as pointless...

Back in 2003, a program was set up to train the Iraqi police, set up by the State Dept. This was seen as inadequate, and the program was shifted over to the Pentagon as soon as F Paul Bremer was kicked out of the country. It remained under military control until this last October, when it was handed back to the State Dept as our soldiers were leaving.

A couple problems developed since the program's inception: one, that nobody asked the Iraqi government if they wanted such a program, and two, it never addressed any real-world problems the Iraqi police dealt with. After all of this time, it's obvious that no-one from the US in charge in Iraq has bothered to learn anything of Iraqi customs and culture. One example given in the recent article on this subject in the NY Times: "A lesson given by an American police instructor to a class of Iraqi trainees neatly encapsulated the program’s failings. There are two clues that could indicate someone is planning a suicide attack, the instructor said: a large bank withdrawal and heavy drinking.


The problem with that advice, which was recounted by Ginger Cruz, the former deputy inspector general at the American Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, was that few Iraqis have bank accounts and an extremist Sunni Muslim bent on carrying out a suicide attack is likely to consider drinking a cardinal sin..." Advice that might be helpful in a European country or the US... Another problem is that the Iraqis no longer want any US presence in their country. Part of it is because they no longer want the US to watch over the increasing evolving of an authoritarian government, and another factor is Iraq is increasingly becoming a satellite of Iran, like it or not. Despite the easy access to millions of dollars stolen by Iraqis from the Americans...

After nine years of reconstruction, and over $353 million in projects that have been abandoned, our military and diplomats never even developed a curriculum to follow. The current complaint from the State Dept about the military has been that whatever had been developed only fit into counterinsurgency measures, and they haven't had time to show the Iraqis how to stop a car or getting a cat out of a tree... The end result is that the program will be scuttled, the contractors will be recalled by the end of the year, and the Embassy in Iraq will have to find something else to squander the money on, because there are still officers in the State Dept that feel it was a successful program, given more time. Heaven forbid they return the money to help pay down the national debt...


"According to documents recovered from Osama Bin Laden's compound before his death, the Al Qaeda leader was worried that morale in the terrorist organization was fading. Bin Laden was concerned that his men were so depressed they wouldn't commit suicide." – Seth Meyers
Another of the "revelations" that the US is spoon-feeding the press, that comes from the papers taken from Osama bin Laden's hideaway in Pakistan, is that their was an antagonistic relationship between al Qaeda and the government of Iran. This is opposite from the propaganda that the US Treasury has put out that the relationship was actually a cozy one. But wait, they're both right!!!

The answer is simple. For many years, Iran had held members of Osama bin Laden as hostages, under house arrest on the outskirts of Tehran. As long as al Qaeda didn't mount any attacks on Iran, his wives and children would be fine. And it worked, though bin Laden wasn't happy over it. As soon as the rest of the world learned that Iran had the children, efforts were made to have them released to Saudi Arabia. Then, al Qaeda could think of making attacks on Iran, if it desired. The death of Osama and the uprising in Syria has distracted them from putting any plans to work... It's highly ironic that now al Qaeda and the US have been on the same sides in conflicts in Libya and Syria. If we stopped killing them by drones, and if they stopped trying to blow up our airplanes with pairs of underwear, we might end up Best Friends Forever...

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