[NYTr] Bush Gets Mounting Reports of Iraq Woes

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Dave Muller (southnews) - Aug 31, 2007


Bush Gets Mounting Reports of Iraq Woes

By ROBERT BURNS and PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) - Awaiting a visit Friday by President Bush to discuss 
the war, the Pentagon defended its efforts to rid the Iraqi national 
police of sectarian bias and corruption, even as an independent review 
found the force too tainted to continue.

In a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a secure conference room 
dubbed ``the Tank,'' Bush was expected to hear deep concerns from 
leaders of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines about strains that are 
building on the force - and on troops' families - as a result of
lengthy and repeated tours in Iraq.

In a fresh sign of U.S. frustration with the Iraqi government in 
Baghdad, a senior U.S. commander said in an Associated Press interview 
that he is aggravated by the slow pace of action by Iraq's central 
government to ensure that its security forces are properly led,
supplied and equipped on the battlefield.

``I have not seen any improvement really in the year I've been here in 
that regard,'' said Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, the commander of U.S. 
forces in northern Iraq. He said the Iraqi army is doing ``pretty
well'' in fighting the insurgency alongside U.S. troops, but they are
not getting sufficient support from Baghdad.

``Progress is slower than it should be inside the (Iraqi) army in 
particular'' with regard to proper support and direction from national 
leaders in Baghdad, Mixon said by telephone, adding that the problem 
lies in a combination of bureaucratic obstacles and sectarian-based 
decisions about army leadership appointments.

Two independent assessments of the situation in Iraq already have been 
previewed this week - the latest finding that Iraq's national police
are so corrupt and influenced by sectarianism that the corps should be 
scrapped and replaced with a smaller force.

An independent commission established by Congress to study Iraq's 
security forces will recommend starting over and reshaping the troubled 
25,000-member police organization with a more elite force, a defense 
official said Friday. He said the report was more positive about 
progress being made by the Iraqi army.

The report from a commission headed by the former commander of U.S. 
troops in Europe, retired Gen. James Jones, is to be presented to 
Congress next week but Gates and other officials were briefed about it 
this week, said the official, who spoke on condition ofinfluence in the 
national police. He said he had not seen the Jones report.

``It should come as no surprise to anyone that there have been problems 
with sectarianism within the Iraqi national police force, and we have 
been working on it along with the Iraqi government for some time to fix 
that problem,'' Morrell said.

``We believe we now have a program in place which is showing progress, 
and that is by what we like to call `reblooming' the Iraqi national 
police force. We are revetting, retraining and then reintroducing
forces into the Iraqi national police force,'' he added. ``The intent
of the program is to rid the Iraqi national police force of their
sectarian biases that have been present from the get-go.''

At least five of the nine police brigades have been taken off duty and 
sent to be retrained and reintegrated into the force, said Defense 
Department spokesman Bryan Whitman. He said the Iraqi government also 
recently approved a plan to hire some 2,000 internal affairs personnel 
to investigate problems in the force.

In his remarks to the AP, Mixon said he agrees the Iraqi national
police should undergo retraining, adding that their biggest problem is
a lack of experienced leadership. Sectarianism had been a problem in
one of the two main national police units in his area, but that has
since been corrected, he said.

``Certainly some retraining would be beneficial,'' Mixon said, but he 
did not endorse the idea of scrapping the current force and starting 
over. ``There is no question that the government of Iraq needs some
type of police force that is mobile, that can move into certain areas
that require police strengthening for selected periods of time. If
that's the way they reshape them I think that would be a good idea.''

The Iraqi National Police, a paramilitary organization run by the 
Interior Ministry, has long been feared and distrusted by the Iraqi 
people and is considered the weak link in the Iraqi security system. 
Many of its early senior officers were veterans of the Badr Brigade,
the Iranian-backed Shiite militia formed in Iran from among Shiite
refugees who had fled Saddam Hussein's rule.

The national police are separate from the far more numerous local
police.

The U.S. has been working to weed out corrupt members, taking whole 
police units out of service and retraining them, as well as removing a 
number of commanders.

The report on Iraqi forces follows circulation earlier this week of a 
draft report by the Government Accountability Office, the auditing arm 
of Congress that found the Iraqi government has failed to meet
political and security goals.

A third report - by the nation's intelligence agencies last week -
found there has been some progress, but that violence remains high, the
Iraqi government will become more precarious over the next six to 12
months and its security forces have not improved enough to operate
without outside help.

Training and equipping an Iraqi Army, police force and border corps is 
key to handing over responsibility for Iraq's security and bringing
U.S. troops home. Commanders have said they hoped to have a 390,000
security forces trained by the end of this year, but that they are not
yet capable enough in some areas for the U.S. to reduce its troop
levels. 


The archives of South News can be found at
http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/