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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (341599)	6/28/2007 9:07:15 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574750

19 billion dollars later, Iraqi forces fall short by Stephen Collinson Wed Jun 27, 2:53 PM ET The United States has sunk more than 19 billion dollars into training Iraqi forces, but new army and police units still cannot enforce security, a congressional report warned Wednesday. Four years after the US invasion, 346,500 Iraqi military and police have been trained, but readiness is not evenly spread and there is strong evidence some newly trained troops are committing sectarian violence, the report said. The study, by a subcommittee of the House of Representatives Armed Services panel, was the latest unflattering assessment of US operations in Iraq, and came as support ebbs for current Iraq policy among Senate Republicans. The hugely expensive and complicated US mission to train Iraqi forces has had "mixed results," the report said, with Iraqi police forces particularly problematic. Though some units are operational, "the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) have not yet developed as fast as the coalition planned and ... are not yet ready to take full responsibility for their country's security," the bi-partisan report said. And though 346,500 forces have been trained, it is not clear how many are still operational, the committee said, warning the US Defense Department "must focus on personnel and equipment accountability systems." "This bipartisan report shows clearly that the president's plan to stand down our troops as the Iraqis stand up has been a failure to this point," said Oversight and Investigations committee chairman Martin Meehan. Republican Representative Phil Gingrey expressed concern that some new security forces members trained by US soldiers, could end up on the opposite side of the sectarian war or in bloodthirsty militia. "It is obviously a very difficult thing to do and we want to make sure we don't train the enemy, there is always that potential risk," he said. The report also warned that Iraq's military and political infrastructure was sorely lacking. "The Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Interior are not capable of accounting for, supporting or fully controlling their forces in the field. "In addition, these ministries lack the capacity to execute their budgets." The report was published two weeks after the Lieutenant-General Martin Dempsey, who spent the last two years running the training effort, offered a mixed assessment of its success. "Iraqi Army and Police units do not have tactical staying power or sufficient capability to surge forces locally," Dempsey told the committee. "The ISF also have shortages of leaders from the tactical to the national level ... in addition, their logistics infrastructure is immature which limits their ability to function effectively against a broad array of challenges." Building Iraqi military and security forces is seen as a critical mission which will be crucial in determining if and when US forces can leave the country and avoid leaving a deadly power vacuum. Critics of the Bush administration have lambasted top officials for the slow pace of the effort, and there have been reports of desertions from the Iraqi forces and of police forces infiltrated by militia members.