Euro military police force set up

[lovuian]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4638554.stm

A European military police force has been launched in Italy.

The European Gendarmerie will be made up of military police from five EU countries and will be available for peacekeeping missions worldwide.

The non-permanent force will have 800 police officers available to deploy within 30 days' notice and a pool of 2,300 reinforcements on standby.

The force, based in Vicenza, will be used for post-conflict peacekeeping and maintaining public order.

more...
Is this the beginning of the Europe Union army... the uniform hat could have been better...

[Joanne98]

1. Watch the "end days" whackos go beserk.

[stepnw1f]

2. Why Does This Sound Bad?

I just had a vision of Pink Floyd's the Wall "Run" with fascist beating up regular people in the streets.

[UncleSepp]

3. Military police have appropriate training for the job

It makes sense to have trained military police for policing operations, which is what much of peacekeeping entails. Having troops doing the job who are not trained in policing often results in more misunderstandings and more aggressive behavior. Police are trained to take troublemakers into custody, but soldiers who are not police are trained to kill troublemakers, resulting in a less effective or even counterproductive peacekeeping force and higher civilian casualties.

[tocqueville]

4. OK, I have to comment

this is quite unfair

1) the European "Army" already exists outside of Nato, it's called the EUROCORPS

it has 60 000 men and 700 tanks, besides air support etc...

http://www.eurocorps.org/site/index.php?language=en&content=home
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocorps

it worked in Bosnia/kosovo and is now participating to the peacekeeping in Afghanistan

2) the EUFOR is a branch of NATO, without US direct participation on the ground.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EUFOR

those entities have been very succesfull where they worked or work and had very few casualties.

The police force named in the article is only a complement, and a specialisation. Experiences show that experimented police is far better in many situation to assure peacekeeping than combat troops. the Iraqui experience shows it very clearly..

Today's Italy is not Mussolini's Italy even if Berlusconi is a jerk, bound to disappear in the next election...
Besides the police force is not Italian but multinational...

so please give it a break. Those guys aren't new brown shirts. And they surely can play a vital role in international missions where the US is unable to do it, due to its own shortcomings... but that's another story...