It’s no wonder W didn’t listen.
These men made sense.
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James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton, co-chairmen, were none too happy that their Iraq Study Group concepts fell upon dead ears in the White House. “I like the old man and I helped his pr*ck son get elected, but 43 is one spoiled, arrogant a$$hole,” Mr. Baker snarled at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday, January 30, 2007.(AP Photo/Dennis Cook)-
U.S. may have botched training of Iraqis
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
28 minutes ago
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WASHINGTON - Training the police is as important to stabilizing Iraq as building an effective army there, but the United States has botched the job by assigning the wrong agencies to the task, two members of the Iraq Study Group said Wednesday.
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“The police training system has not gone well,” said former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the bipartisan commission.
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For a second day, a key Republican directly challenged President Bush to do more than pay “lip service” to this and other recommendations on how to resolve the troubled conflict in Iraq.
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“As a nation we’d be much better off if the executive branch were not so insular,” said Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa. “I’d think the executive branch would be well advised to do more than have a meeting and a news conference to give in-depth consideration to what is being proposed here.”
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According to the report, co-authored by Hamilton and former Attorney General Edwin Meese, 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.”
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In 2004, the mission was assigned to the Defense Department, which devoted more money to the task. But department officials also were insufficiently trained for the job, Hamilton and Meesesaid.As a result, Iraq has little if any on-the-street law enforcement personnel or a functioning judicial system free of corruption, they said.
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.And the FBI should expand its investigative and forensic training in Iraq, Hamilton and Meese told the panel.