L.A. BRONCOS FAN
09-27-2004, 08:13 PM
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - Many of President Bush's assertions about progress in Iraq -- from police training and reconstruction to preparations for January elections -- are in dispute, according to internal Pentagon documents, lawmakers and key congressional aides on Sunday.
Bush used the visit last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to make the case that "steady progress" is being made in Iraq to counter warnings by his Democratic presidential rival, Sen. John Kerry, that the situation in reality is deteriorating. Bush touted preparations for national elections in January, saying Iraq's electoral commission is up and running and told Americans on Saturday that "United Nations electoral advisers are on the ground in Iraq."
He said nearly 100,000 "fully trained and equipped" Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel are already at work, and that would rise to 125,000 by the end of this year....And he promised more than $9 billion will be spent on reconstruction contracts in Iraq over the next several months.
But many of these assertions have met with skepticism from key lawmakers, congressional aides and experts, and Pentagon documents, given to lawmakers and obtained by Reuters, paint a more complicated picture.
The documents show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training...Training has yet to begin for the 4,800-man civil intervention force, which will help counter a deadly insurgency. And none of the 18,000 border enforcement guards have received any centralized training to date, despite earlier claims they had...22,700 Iraqi personnel have received enough basic training to make them "minimally effective at their tasks," in contrast to the 100,000 figure cited by Bush.
The White House defended its figures, and a senior administration official defined "fully trained" as having gone through "initial basic operations training."
The status of election planning in Iraq is also in question. Of the $232 million in Iraqi funds set aside for the Iraqi electoral commission, it has received a mere $7 million, according to House Appropriations Committee staff. So far, the United Nations has been reluctant to send staff back into the battle zone. It only has 30 to 35 people now in Baghdad, no more than eight working on the elections.
"The framework for it (free and fair elections) hasn't even been set up. The voter registration lists aren't set. There have to be hundreds of polling places, hundreds of trained monitors and poll watchers. None of that has happened," Madeleine Albright told ABC's "This Week."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=5&u=/nm/20040926/pl_nm/iraq_usa_assertions_dc
(And how about the massive corruption and theft that seems to be occurring with our 'reconstruction' funds? While Iraqi unemployment reaches 67%, the reconstruction jobs go to foreign - non-Iraqi - contractors being paid exhorbitant sums for what some say is no work at all, and the companies get a guaranteed profit)
Bush used the visit last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to make the case that "steady progress" is being made in Iraq to counter warnings by his Democratic presidential rival, Sen. John Kerry, that the situation in reality is deteriorating. Bush touted preparations for national elections in January, saying Iraq's electoral commission is up and running and told Americans on Saturday that "United Nations electoral advisers are on the ground in Iraq."
He said nearly 100,000 "fully trained and equipped" Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel are already at work, and that would rise to 125,000 by the end of this year....And he promised more than $9 billion will be spent on reconstruction contracts in Iraq over the next several months.
But many of these assertions have met with skepticism from key lawmakers, congressional aides and experts, and Pentagon documents, given to lawmakers and obtained by Reuters, paint a more complicated picture.
The documents show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training...Training has yet to begin for the 4,800-man civil intervention force, which will help counter a deadly insurgency. And none of the 18,000 border enforcement guards have received any centralized training to date, despite earlier claims they had...22,700 Iraqi personnel have received enough basic training to make them "minimally effective at their tasks," in contrast to the 100,000 figure cited by Bush.
The White House defended its figures, and a senior administration official defined "fully trained" as having gone through "initial basic operations training."
The status of election planning in Iraq is also in question. Of the $232 million in Iraqi funds set aside for the Iraqi electoral commission, it has received a mere $7 million, according to House Appropriations Committee staff. So far, the United Nations has been reluctant to send staff back into the battle zone. It only has 30 to 35 people now in Baghdad, no more than eight working on the elections.
"The framework for it (free and fair elections) hasn't even been set up. The voter registration lists aren't set. There have to be hundreds of polling places, hundreds of trained monitors and poll watchers. None of that has happened," Madeleine Albright told ABC's "This Week."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=5&u=/nm/20040926/pl_nm/iraq_usa_assertions_dc
(And how about the massive corruption and theft that seems to be occurring with our 'reconstruction' funds? While Iraqi unemployment reaches 67%, the reconstruction jobs go to foreign - non-Iraqi - contractors being paid exhorbitant sums for what some say is no work at all, and the companies get a guaranteed profit)