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Archive for October 22nd, 2011
Obama to Create Thousands of Jobs: In Iraq
(Originally published on the Huffington Post)The US is prepared to spend up to five billion dollars to create more jobs for police officers, paying $100-$150k a year. The Government can’t find enough people to take the jobs, and is looking for recruits, no experience necessary, all training provided, right in your hometown.
One catch: the jobs are for Iraqis, in Iraq. No Americans need apply.
The secret mantra of the Iraq war has always been “training,” specifically the always-just-out-of-reach goal of training the Iraq security forces to take over from the US. The cry has been heard for years: George W. Bush even made “we’ll stand down as they stand up” a campaign slogan in 2008.
Now, as the war in Iraq proceeds through its eighth year, the State Department was on Capitol Hill October 12 in front of the Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations begging a skeptical Congress for more money. “Training” is again being cited as the cure-all for America’s apparently insatiable desire to throw money away in Mesopotamia. The latest tranche of taxpayer cash is for one billion dollars a year, every year for five years, to pay police instructors and cop salaries in Iraq.
A Long Train
The US has been training Iraqi cops for years, under the auspices of Army and State contractors. In fact, the US government has spent $7.3 billion for Iraqi police training since 2003. Now, with the Army shifting to teaching Iraqis how to operate the hi-tech weapons they will be buying from the US, the State Department is picking up the cop training gig full-time. A job announcement last year hired contract police instructors to go to Iraq, where, under the watchful eye of State’s own internal Stasi, Diplomatic Security, they are preparing to start teaching at thirty locations around the country.
Given that the Army and State have been teaching police work in Iraq now for several years, the student cops must either be the world’s slowest learners, or have the world’s highest job turnover. Sadly, it looks like the latter. Iraqi cops tend to have very short life expectancies and that is why, even with the healthy salary offer of $150,000 a year (the average per capita income in Iraq is only $3800; cops in the US make concededly less than what State is willing to pay in Iraq. Starting salaries run $40-65k a year), State can’t find enough, um, bodies, to fill up the recruit classes.
The Hard, Short Life of an Iraqi Cop
As an example of how life is for an Iraqi law officer, this week alone attacks included two suicide car bombs minutes apart at Baghdad police stations, killing at least 25 people in the capital’s deadliest day in a month. More than 70 people were wounded. In one instance, the street in front of a police station had been closed from 2004, but was reopened about four weeks ago, sadly allowing the suicide bomber to get close to the station house. In other attacks the same day, a bomb wounded a police brigadier general in north Baghdad, while two police were shot in south Baghdad.
These attacks took place in an Iraq still occupied by some 41,000 American soldiers. Come January 2012, the US Army posture will diminish to an as yet undetermined number, likely around 5000 troops. The State Department hopes to conduct its police training under these conditions, protected by its own mercenary army of 5000 security contractors, using hand-me-down Army gear.
Corruption, Mismanagement and Torture Play a Part
The killing of Iraqi cops is probably the main issue holding back recruitment. However, the lack of organized control by their parent organization, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior (MOI), is another impediment to a well-run police force, regardless of how much training they receive.
In December 2006, the Iraq Study Group reported that the Iraqi Interior Ministry was filled with corruption, infiltrated by militia and unable to control its own police. In July 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported that Iraq’s MOI had become a “federation of oligarchs” where various floors of the headquarters building were controlled by rival militia groups and organized criminal gangs. The report described the MOI as an eleven-story powder keg of factions where power struggles were settled by assassinations in the parking lot. In its September 2007 report, the congressionally-mandated Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq described Iraq’s MOI as a ministry in name only, dysfunctional, sectarian and suffering from ineffective leadership. To make matters worse, the police have been implicated in multiple incidents of
Who Will Guard the Guards?
There remain significant questions on if State will be able to oversee the huge police training program.
The State Department’s International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) bureau came under fire from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) for its management of the contract with DynCorp to train police. A 2010 audit concluded that “INL lacks sufficient resources and controls to adequately manage the task orders with DynCorp. As a result, over $2.5 billion in US funds are vulnerable to waste and fraud.” Most of $1.2 billion State was given to train Iraqi police remains unaccounted for. Though not directly related to police training, State’s own Inspector General just found that INL mismanaged another Dynacorp contract in Afghanistan to the tune ofFollowing the negative report by SIGIR, State did the logical thing: they slammed the door on the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction auditors. State’s coordinator for Iraq transition, Patricia Haslach, told Congress that SIGIR has almost no jurisdiction over State Department spending in Iraq, including that five billion sought for police training. State’s reluctance to submit to the audits is understandable; SIGIR stated that 400,000 Iraqis received training and are on the force, but the “capabilities of these forces are unknown because no assessments of total force capabilities were made.”
The Bright Side
Undersecretary of State Pat Kennedy reminded Congress October 12 without irony that “We have a robust contracting oversight system firmly in place and being executed by our Bureau of Administration. The Bureau of Diplomatic Security is overseeing its competitively awarded security task orders using the enhanced oversight and management system put in place over the last several years.”
Pat Kennedy also said that providing assistance to the Iraqi police and security forces “will eventually reduce the cost of our presence as security in the country improves and we can rely on Iraqi security for our own protection.”
And it is not like State has just been sitting on its hands. In July 2011, out of Iraq’s 400,000 cops, the State Department invited nine of them to the US for three weeks with local police forces in Vermont, Pittsburgh and Denver, cities that no doubt offer a lot of points of commonality with policing in Iraq.
With plans like that, what could go wrong?
Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the US Government. The Department of State does not approve, endorse or authorize this blog or book. Follow us on Twitter!
Online Book Chat: Saturday, 5pm EST at Firedoglake.com
I will be online at Firedoglake.com Saturday from 5pm until we run out of the good stuff. Drop by for the online chat session, ask questions, tell me off, complain, whatever you like.
You need a password from the site to participate, so sign up now and be ready to join us at 5pm.
See you there!
Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the US Government. The Department of State does not approve, endorse or authorize this blog or book. Follow us on Twitter!
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary (PDAS) Reveals Classified Info?
So, thirteen months ago I submitted my book manuscript to the State Department for clearance. Nobody at the State Department said anything about the contents until thirteen months later when Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (PDAS) Dana Shell Smith sent a fax to my publisher asking for the redaction of what she said was classified material.The publisher refused to redact anything. You can read Dana’s original fax with the demanded redactions.
So I wrote to Dana asking about this, and she replied. Better read our emails before proceeding.
But, now I am confused.
The unclassified email by PDAS Dana Shell Smith refers to an unclassified fax sent by PDAS Smith already on the Internet that acknowledges that the Department as represented by PDAS Smith considers material in a book openly for sale worldwide classified, meaning that this unclassified email by PDAS Smith confirms that the material in my book is classified, at least according to PDAS Smith.
And somehow I am the one accused of disclosing classified with the suspended clearance because of a link to Wikileaks?
I may issue an appeal to everyone who bought my book to please not read the sections PDAS Smith now admits in an unclassified setting are classified. If they have read them already, I will suggest they do Jaegermeister shots until they forget what they have read.
Also, the claimed classified material deals with another USG agency. No one from that Agency has contacted me or my publisher. Indeed, no one from Diplomatic Security has asked about this claimed classified material.
Just PDAS Smith. Digging the hole a little deeper.
Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the US Government. The Department of State does not approve, endorse or authorize this blog or book. Follow us on Twitter!
The Iraq War, by the Numbers
Here’s a story by Lauren Finnegan summing up our eight years of war in Iraq:* 4,287: The number of U.S. troops who were killed in Iraq.
* 30,182: The number of U.S. troops who were wounded in Iraq.
* 112,708: The estimated number of civilians killed in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
* 318: The number of non-U.S. troop deaths in Iraq.
* 468: The number of contractors killed in Iraq.
* 150: The number of journalists killed in Iraq.
* 2003: The year in which the deadliest month for civilian deaths in Iraq took place in March with 3,977 being killed.* 63 percent: The percentage of soldiers who have deployed to Iraq at least once.
* 40 percent: The percentage of soldiers who have deployed to Iraq at least twice.
* 90 percent: The percentage of United States Marines who have deployed to Iraq.
* 15 months: The average length of deployment for soldiers before August 2008 in Iraq.
* 500 per month: The number of calls that the Domestic Violence Hotline for military spouses has received since the start of the Iraq war. The average used to be 50 calls per month.* 40,000: The approximate number of troops still serving in Iraq.
* $799,981,238,000: The approximate cost to date of the Iraq War.
* $270 million: The amount of daily spending by the U.S. government in Iraq.
* $9 billion: The amount of unaccounted for U.S. taxpayer money that was supposed to be used for the Iraq War.* 190,000: Number of guns that were either lost or unaccounted for during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
* 12 percent to 20 percent: The estimated percentage of troops who have served in Iraq coming home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD.* 300,000: The estimated number of mental health casualties from the Iraq War, meaning the number of veterans who are experiencing severe mental problems due to their service in Iraq.
* $660 billion: The amount of money that it is going to take to treat these Iraq War veterans for their lifetimes.
* 1.6 million: The number of Iraqi civilians who have been displaced because of the ongoing war.
Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the Department of State, the Department of Defense or any other entity of the US Government. The Department of State does not approve, endorse or authorize this blog or book. Follow us on Twitter!
Buy the Book:
- RT @reidarvisser: @kingston314 @LubnaNaji I recommend @iraqoilreport for keeping track of GKP and Iraq/Kurdistan
- American dissenters in Chicago arrested; blind Chinese dissenter welcomed. Another import.
- RT @TomDispatch: Judge rules unconstitutional a section of the #NDAA that would allow the indefinite detention of US citizens. http://t.co/SAs4j3Bz
- RT @SamwiseOccupies: I used to hate people who threw around the term #Orwellian, then I read about the #Nato3. #ochi #nonato #nato #FTP
- The hardline stand against reporter's privilege is a hallmark of Obama's unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers. http://t.co/PiSJPBtE
