Iraqi Training Botched By U.S.

    In remarks made ready for his talk Wednesday with the Senate Judiciary Committee, former Rep. Lee Hamilton :

"The police training system has not gone well."  This is in regards to the training of the Iraqi police and their army.

    The training has been screwed up by the United States because the job was given to the wrong agencies to complete the task.

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer

January 31,2007

The U.S. erred by first assigning the task of shaping the judicial system in a largely lawless country to the State Department and private contractors who "did not have the expertise or the manpower to get the job done," Hamilton and Meese said in testimony obtained by The Associated Press.

Justice Department officials, they said, should lead the work of transforming the system. Police executives and supervisors should replace the military police personnel now assigned.

The recommendations about the Iraqi judicial system were included in the Iraq Study Group's report last year, but got little attention. Hamilton and Meese said Wednesday that unless the U.S. helps create a capable, trained professional police force and functioning criminal justice system, "ordinary Iraqis will not live in peace and will not have confidence in their new government."

"Long-term security depends as much on the Iraqi police and judicial system as the Iraqi Army," they testified. Entire Article.

   I would like to know who the idiot was that did all of this bad assigning in the first place.

 

Technorati tags: Iraqis, Training, Police, U.S.

 

Waxman And The Dems Start Investigations

    The Democrats have begun their investigative hearing since taking the store over from the children in Congress. Their sights have been pointed at the 'spin' that the White house has been churning out about global warming.

    Advocacy groups have been saying that Federal scientist have been pressured by the White house to downplay global warming.

Rep. Henry Waxman ( voting record), D-Calif. said, "It appears there may have been an orchestrated campaign to mislead the public about climate change."

At the House hearing, two private advocacy groups produced a survey of 279 government climate scientists showing that many of them say they have been subjected to political pressure aimed at downplaying the climate threat. Their complaints ranged from a challenge to using the phrase "global warming" to raising uncertainty on issues on which most scientists basically agree, to keeping scientists from talking to the media.

The survey and separate interviews with scientists "has brought to light numerous ways in which U.S. federal climate science has been filtered, suppressed and manipulated in the last five years," Francesca Grifo, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the committee.   Yahoo News

     It is about time that some of the investigations have begun, but, could the committees have not found a more important subject to start with? Oh well, I guess that starting at the bottom is as good a start as any. Maybe this will work it's way up to the top of the chain.      

         

Technorati tags: Waxman, Democrats, Investigations