{"id":2632,"date":"2004-09-28T12:01:18","date_gmt":"2004-09-28T17:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2632.html"},"modified":"2004-09-28T12:01:18","modified_gmt":"2004-09-28T17:01:18","slug":"it-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-iraqi-security-forces-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/it-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-iraqi-security-forces-is\/","title":{"rendered":"It depends on what the meaning of ‘Iraqi security forces’ is"},"content":{"rendered":"

During the joint Bush-Allawi press conference<\/a> last week, the president struck a — what else? — confident tone about the growing size of Iraqi security forces.<\/p>\n

“Iraq must be able to defend itself. And Iraqi security forces are taking increasing responsibility for their country’s security. Nearly 100,000 fully trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers, and other security personnel are working today. And that total will rise to 125,000 by the end of this year.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As it turns out, there are so many things wrong with this simple declaration, it’s hard to know where to start. Bush either has no idea what he’s talking about, or he’s lying. Badly.<\/p>\n

First, when Bush said there are nearly 100,000 “fully trained and equipped” Iraqi security personnel already working to keep the peace, he was exaggerating to the point of comedy. As Reuters explained<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[Pentagon documents, given to lawmakers and obtained by Reuters] show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s quite an exaggeration, isn’t it? Bush says “nearly 100,000” when the truth is barely over 8,000? He was only off by a factor of 12<\/i>. I’m sure this will kick off a relentless media barrage on how Bush is a serial exaggerator. Yeah, right.<\/p>\n

And when does Bush’s Pentagon believe we will have a fully trained Iraqi police force? July 2006<\/i><\/a>. Funny, Bush left out that little detail.
\n
\nSecond, when Bush said the security forces “will rise to 125,000 by the end of this year,” he failed to acknowledge that even this unrealistic goal, which we will not achieve, won’t be good enough<\/a> to meet the needs on the ground.<\/p>\n

At a time when Iraqi insurgents are targeting local police officers and recruits for attack, the United States has raised by one-third — to 135,000 — the size of the Iraqi police force it says will be needed to help secure the country, according to information the administration has provided to Congress.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And finally, while Bush insisted that Iraqi security forces are “taking increasing responsibility,” the facts show the opposite is true<\/a>. Indeed, these forces are actually getting smaller<\/i>, not bigger.<\/p>\n

Anthony H. Cordesman, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, released a study Friday showing that the Iraqi Police Service payroll list “includes large numbers of pensions and ‘non-performing’ police” known not to be serving. He also said the overall police numbers were dropping “in part because of desertions and purging of low-grade personnel.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The disconnect between Bush’s rhetoric and our reality is approaching frightening levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the joint Bush-Allawi press conference last week, the president struck a — what else? — confident tone about the growing size of Iraqi security forces. “Iraq must be able to defend itself. And Iraqi security forces are taking increasing responsibility for their country’s security. Nearly 100,000 fully trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}