Allawi's and * success story.......Cops, Killers & Moles

[Fla Dem]

Coincidently I just happened to read this article in this week's Newsweek after listening to * and Allawi's glowing reports on the progress in Iraq. Someone is looking through rose colored glasses. I wonder who? :shrug:

Cops, Killers & Moles

"The American plan is to get Iraqis to impose order and protect civilians. But insurgents are slaughtering Iraqi police, and attempts to quickly boost police numbers mean the force now has thousands of bad apples. Some are known criminals. Others may be spies and saboteurs."

By Babak Dehghanpisheh
Newsweek
Sept. 27 issue - At a police building in central Baghdad, portly officers chain-smoke and laugh at one another's jokes. The room is an Iraqi version of an American precinct station. A talk-radio program blares from a transistor in the corner, while a small TV on top of a filing cabinet broadcasts prayers at low volume. The walls are a smudged yellow, the floors streaked-white tile. The place smells of dirty socks and cigarette butts. One of the cops tells a joke about the Kurds. Everyone laughs.


An American we'll call Dave, wearing sunglasses, a baseball cap and a Beretta pistol strapped to his leg, has staked out a position near the door, as a colleague talks to the officer on duty. In his former life, Dave was a small-town police chief. Now he's on contract with the Department of Defense, which hired him to advise and assist the rebuilt Iraqi police force. "In all my years on the force, I never pulled my gun out as much as I have here," he says. "You're paranoid all the time."

-snip-

As it is, police gear has been used repeatedly in attacks against foreigners. During the recent kidnapping of two Italians, one of the attackers was wearing a police uniform. Blue-uniformed assailants were also cited in the assassination of two U.S. government officials in Al Hillah on March 9, the killing of British security contractor Brian Tilley on May 14 and the gruesome attack on Blackwater security personnel in Fallujah on March 31. Were these actual police or insurgents playing the part? "Some policemen are members of criminal gangs," says Brig. Sabah Fahd, director of the Al-Karkh police station, which oversees half of Baghdad. "Some of them even use their police cars when they're committing crimes. Others leak information to terrorist groups."

more.....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6039826/site/newsweek/