162,000 Iraqi security forces trained: US official

[bemildred]

ARBIL, Iraq, May 15 (AFP) - Some 162,000 Iraqis have been trained and equipped for security duty in the violence-plagued country, but many are still not operational, senior US officials said Sunday.

The United States has been stepping up its training of Iraqi security forces to eventually replace the 138,000-strong US contingent, supplemented by 23,000 other international troops, facing a stubborn insurgency.

Now, why can't they be cooperative law-abinding citizens?

The officials, traveling with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her lightning trip here, said the trained Iraqis included 71,000 regular army and National Guard troops, 57,000 police and 15,000 border guards.

Special commandos, special operations forces, highway patrol officers, support troops and other security categories made up the rest, said the officials, who asked not to be named.

PoliticalGateway

[ananda]

1. just so long as..

.. USA and coalition forces are no longer accountable for the fiasco known as Iraq.

After all, it WAS the USA that got rid of Saddam. That's what matters.. and the oil.. and the contracts.. and all that freedom and democracy we brung em.

Sue

[maddezmom]

2. perhaps 162,000 have been trained

but how many have been killed or have deserted?

[bemildred]

3. Iraqi Security Forces: the Grand Illusion

Unfortunately for us, as soon as we consider the mental and moral levels, which Boyd argued are more powerful than the physical level, the advantage shifts. At the mental level, the Fourth Generation elements have already gotten inside the heads of Iraqi police and National Guardsmen. How? By killing them in large numbers. More than 700 have died in the past year, with many more wounded. A story on four recruits for the Iraqi police in the September 27 Washington Post quotes one of them as saying, "We're walking dead men."

That fear opens the door to the sort of deal that typifies Arab countries: the police and Guardsmen collect their paychecks, but look the other way when the resistance is up to something. In some cases, the deal can go further and create double agents, men inside the security forces who actually work for one or more of the resistance organizations. The same day's Post announced the arrest of a "senior commander of the Iraqi National Guard" for, as the U.S. military put it, "having associations with known terrorists, for alleged ties to insurgents." I suspect that if we arrested all the Iraqi Guardsmen who fit that description, Abu Ghraib would again fill to overflowing.

At the moral level, the position of the Iraqi police and Guardsmen is almost hopeless. They are being paid to fight their own countrymen and fellow Mohammedans on behalf of an occupying foreign power that is also (nominally) Christian. The fig leaf of Mr. Allawi's "government" deceives no one, especially after last week's pictures of Allawi holding hands with George Bush, the Islamic world's Voldemort. Is it any wonder that, all their training notwithstanding, when it comes to fighting alongside American forces the Iraqis usually change sides or go home?

---

Throughout history, armies of hirelings have melted at a touch when faced with people fighting for something they believe in. All the training in the world will make no difference. The core problem is the deepest taproot of Fourth Generation war: the "state" Iraqi security forces are being told to fight for has no legitimacy. When Bush and Kerry argue that we can avoid defeat in Iraq by training more Iraqis to do the fighting for us, they are indulging in a grand illusion.

CounterPunch

[berni_mccoy]

4. If that's the case, there are more Iraqi forces than...

U.S. forces in Iraq. Must be time to pull out. Oh, wait, we aren't pulling out? Hmm.....

[Javaman]

5. Define "trained"...

Does this training mean they won't dissapear? Or melt back into the rebels? or not drop and run at the first sign of fear? or is it trained on paper?

I don't believe anything our gov't or the Iraqi gov't tells us any more. As if I ever did to begin with.

[bemildred]

7. I think in this case "trained" equates to "paid to show up". nt

[0007]

6. Seems I've heard that song before

It seems to me I've heard that song before
It's from an old familiar score
I know it well, that melody

It's funny how a theme
Recalls a favorite dream
A dream that brought you so close to me

I know each word, because I've heard that song before
The lyrics said: "for evermore"
For evermore's a memory

Please have them play it again
And (Then) I'll remember just when
I heard that lovely song before

[lonestarnot]

8. Trained for what? How do you train to be slaughtered?

[TahitiNut]

9. Trained to be Human Shields ... Vichy cannon fodder for the Occupiers.

:puke: They're people who aren't counted because, on the global corporatist ledger, they don't count.

[DrDebug]

10. To keep a population of 26,000,000 under control

We need

162,000
138,000 +
23,000 +
------ =
323,000 troops

That's 1,2% and it's not working out either!

[Spazito]

11. The question is: How many are still on the job and how many

have deserted and gone to the other side, taking the equipment with them, not to mention, how many have been killed?

[LeftCoast]

12. Of course 160,000 have deserted already, but who's counting?

:)

[Jacobin]

13. Good. then let's withdraw our troops

[daleo]

14. Probably like one of those Excel course they send you on at work.

You spend half a day in a computer lab and get a fancy looking certificate, which visually puts your university degree to shame. Iraqi police probably got similar training, so that Bush et al can claim to have trained 160,000.

[Cooley Hurd]

15. That explains the calm that's settled over Iraq, doesn't it?

:crazy:

[Lochloosa]

16. What...to tie their shoes? n/t

[Roland99]

17. Training = handed a gun and some ammo.

[dchill]

18. Huge Load

This is such a huge load. If there were 162,000 trained Iraqis, then the entire "Coalition" force could just go home...

[geckosfeet]

19. In 5 years they will be shooting at us to get us out of Iraq.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

20. "But many are still not operational". How many are already dead,....

...wounded, missing-in-action, or joined the anti-US forces?

[chlamor]

21. This article is true I should know I trained them-Here's what I told them

A Reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20:


Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy."And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals ...

Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it."

-- Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

[elvisbear]

22. Pic of US trained Iraqi Special Operation Forces

[chlamor]

23. LOL

I'm totally cuttin' up-Too Heelarryass

gotta keep laughin' through this morass

:toast:

[KC]

24. trained

and one day they will use that training against the US.

KC

[Darranar]

25. I'm sure "stability" is just around the corner...

Just like last month.

And last year.

And two years ago, too.

This mess is not going to end until we get out of it.

[paulk]

26. I saw somewhere that the "police"

had recieved three weeks of training...

Which is a joke.