While General John Abizaid told Congress that he believes Iraq's enemies are buckling, he made clear that native civil and military frames cannot yet support the beset country's weight. Yet. Another complement of specialized law enforcers have been deployed:
The Iraqi Police Service graduated 292 police officers from advanced and specialty courses at the Adnan Training Facility, March 3, as part of the Iraqi government's ongoing effort to train its security forces.The courses consist of Kidnapping Investigations with 27 graduates, Basic Criminal Investigations with 63 graduates, Interview & Interrogations with 41 graduates, Organized Crime Investigations with 58 graduates, Incident Command System with 32 graduates, Internal Controls with 44 graduates, and Executive Leadership with 27 graduates.
Iraqi police have been unfairly criticized for yielding stations or the streets to terrorists packing medium infantry weapons from Saddam's countless hoards. As the Iraqi military's service is intended, like any free nation, to be one of peripheral and external operation, combating well-armed thugs must fall to civil authority:
The Iraqi Police graduated 27 officers from the Special Weapons and Tactics [SWAT] training course March 3. The officers completed a specialized four-week training curriculum that places a heavy emphasis on weapons training and includes training in dynamic entries, mechanical breaching, diversionary devices, sniper training, intelligence and surveillance, offensive driving skills, and human relations and police conduct.
Numbers are small but growing, and likely encouraged by successes in cities like Mosul. Finally, with the graduation of six dozen Iraqi emergency response officers, we're likely to hear of more heroism as seen two months ago in Tikrit.
All law enforcement agencies will benefit from countrywide, internet-accessible satellite surveillance, noted by a well-known citizen who understandably looks forward to the network's activation.
(Note Al Mendhar's geographic organization of news, denoted by a colorful map in the site's lefthand sidebar, perfectly tailored for news observers.)