Misjudgments Marred U.S. Plans for Iraqi Police

[spindrifter]

As chaos swept Iraq after the American invasion in 2003, the Pentagon began its effort to rebuild the Iraqi police with a mere dozen advisers. Overmatched from the start, one was sent to train a 4,000-officer unit to guard power plants and other utilities. A second to advise 500 commanders in Baghdad. Another to organize a border patrol for the entire country.

Three years later, the police are a battered and dysfunctional force that has helped bring Iraq to the brink of civil war. Police units stand accused of operating death squads for powerful political groups or simple profit. Citizens, deeply distrustful of the force, are setting up their own neighborhood security squads. Killings of police officers are rampant, with at least 547 slain this year, roughly as many as Iraqi and American soldiers combined, records show.

The police, initially envisioned by the Bush administration as a cornerstone in a new democracy, have instead become part of Iraq's grim constellation of shadowy commandos, ruthless political militias and other armed groups. Iraq's new prime minister and senior American officials now say the country's future — and the ability of America to withdraw its troops — rests in large measure on whether the police can be reformed and rogue groups reined in.
Like so much that has defined the course of the war, the realities on the ground in Iraq did not match the planning in Washington. An examination of the American effort to train a police force in Iraq, drawn from interviews with several dozen American and Iraqi officials, internal police reports and visits to Iraqi police stations and training camps, shows a cascading series of misjudgments by White House and Pentagon officials, who repeatedly underestimated the role the United States would need to play in rebuilding the police and generally maintaining order.

<snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/world/middleeast/21security.html?hp&ex=1148184000&en=84f4002b27e45d00&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The article is an anatomy of the type of misjudgments that have been rife in the failed BushCo presidency.

[jimshoes]

1. And they accuse the Democrats of

not having a plan. I don't see anyone jumping up to take credit for this "cakewalk" that's happening in Iraq.

[spindrifter]

2. What was it the Chimp said--

I don't know how history is going to treat me. I won't be around then.

[jimshoes]

3. Yep, something like that,

I think it was "What does it matter, we'll all be dead" Or something like that.