Yet more evidence that Bush/Cheney have
essentially given up on truly stabilizing Iraq (remember, they have already stopped funding for most reconstruction projects):
(more below)
The Bush administration plans to shut down a highly successful Iraqi police academy in Jordan even as security in Iraq worsens, the Daily News has learned.
The Jordan International Police Training Center near Amman will stop training Iraqi police recruits this year, having already graduated 40,000 cops from its eight-week course since 2004, U.S. officials confirmed.
"The word we have is that JIPTC completes its mission on Dec. 31, and we are proceeding on that basis," said academy spokesman Iver Peterson.
. . .
The $120 million Jordan academy is safe and has police trainers from 15 nations. It graduates a staggering 1,800 Iraqi cops and border guards each month. Fewer than 4% have washed out.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) expressed shock when told by The News that the facility will soon close.
"It is mystifying and maddening that they would shut this down while violence in Iraq is spiraling out of control and in the face of an urgent shortage of trained police officers," said Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Senate subcommittee overseeing Iraq reconstruction funding.
. . .
"Moving the functions of this facility to Iraq will add to the cost - especially for security - and subtract from these vital recruitment and training missions," Leahy said.
The Iraqi Police - apart from the paramilitary National Police linked to death squads - are routinely attacked at recruiting centers and stations [within Iraq]. By some estimates, 12,000 of the 130,000-man force have been killed or wounded or have quit or been fired.
"They're under siege," said one U.S. official. "Their main focus is their own security."
"We are the one true Iraq success story," said another U.S. official in Jordan. "We train four times the number of any academy in Iraq, we don't have insurgent attacks and trainers who won't set foot in Iraq will work with us here."
In fact, 201 of the 365 instructors are from countries that won't go to Iraq, including Austria, Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Finland, Jordan and Sweden.
Administration officials declined to comment on the criticism but praised the academy. "I think everybody's satisfied with it," said Robert Gifford, who leads the State Department's CivPol Unit. "It's widely regarded as a good thing."
The cutting off of funds for reconstruction, and now the closing of an Iraqi police training center that trains quadruple the number of recruits as any other training facility, are just further indications that a stable, democratic Iraq is a pipe dream, and the GOP knows it.
It was always going to be exceedingly difficult to create a stable, democratic Iraq, and unrealistic to think it could be done - which, of course, is why that was never given as a reason for invading until long after said invasion, when it became essentially undeniable that Iraq had no WMDs. But the stunning incompetence of the Republicans in grossly mismanaging the war effort has made such a goal basically impossible to achieve.
Quite frankly, I don't think the creation of a stable democracy in Iraq was ever a real goal for the Republicans in the White House or Congress. Their goal was to physically get our troops into a nation with the 2nd-largest proven oil reserves on Earth, and keep them there. This, of course, would go a long way towards explaining why they never bothered to plan for almost anything in post-war Iraq - other than securing the Oil Ministry, oil fields and oil production/processing facilities.
Thoroughly rebuilding Iraq, buttressing its economy, creating a real democracy - they are all besides the point when your goal is basically to grab and hold onto a portion of the invaded nation's natural resources and to construct forward military bases there to make up for the ones that we're losing in Saudi Arabia.
In fact - and this is important - creating an economically successful, democratic state would HURT their ability to maintain control over Iraq's oil and possibly their ability to maintain significant, permanent military bases there. Badly hurt it.
An economically robust, free nation - especially one with an Islamic population largely hostile to the U.S. and to our #1 ally in the region (i.e. Israel) would not be too likely to just let U.S. oil companies come in and take over their nation's oil supply and industry, nor would it be guaranteed that they would allow us to keep tens of thousands of heavily armed troops on their home soil, permanently.
In fact, you could pretty much rule that out if Iraq had the sort of economic clout and stable government which would allow them to be truly independent of us. If Iraq were to be successfully rebuilt and made stable and prosperous, they would be no more likely to allow us to run their industries, control their economy, give us free reign to use their home soil for our own military purposes, etc. than France would be.
Think I'm being too cynical? Read up on what we did in Guatemala:
"Guatemalan history is marked by the Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with a small group of Guatemalans, overthrew the freely-elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 after the government expropriated unused land owned by the United Fruit Company, a U.S.-based banana merchant. The CIA codename for the coup was Operation PBSUCCESS, its second successful overthrow of a foreign government. The subsequent military rule, beginning with dictator Carlos Castillo Armas, led to over 30 years of civil war that, from 1960, led to the death of an estimated 200,000 Guatemalan civilians. According to the U.N.-sponsored Truth Commission, government forces and paramilitaries were responsible for over 90% of the human rights violations during the war. During the first 10 years, the victims of the state-sponsored terror were primarily students, workers, professionals, and opposition figures of all political tendencies, but in the last years, they were thousands of mostly rural Mayan farmers and non-combatants. More than 450 Mayan villages were destroyed and over one million people became refugees. This is considered one of the worst ethnic cleansings in modern Latin America. In certain areas, such as Baja Verapaz, the Truth Commission considered that the Guatemalan state engaged in an intentional policy of genocide against particular ethnic groups.
"From the 1950s to the 1990s (with a suspension of military aid between 1977 and 1982), the US government directly supported Guatemala's army with training, weapons and money. The United States Army Special Forces (Green Berets) were sent to Guatemala to transform its army into a "modern counter-insurgency force" and made it the most powerful and sophisticated in Central America. In 1999, then US president Bill Clinton stated that the United States was wrong to have provided support to Guatemalan military forces that took part in the brutal civilian killings [3]. Further CIA involvement included the training of 5,000 Cubans opposed to Fidel Castro and airstrips in its territory for what later became the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion."
. . . and revisit what we did in Iran:
In 1951, an eccentric pro-democratic nationalist, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh rose to prominence in Iran and was elected its first Prime Minister. As Prime Minister, Mossadegh alarmed the West by his nationalization of Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later renamed BP), which controlled all of the country's oil reserves. Britain immediately put an embargo on Iran. Members of the British Intelligence Service approached the United States under President Eisenhower in 1953 to join them in Operation Ajax, a coup against Mossadegh. President Eisenhower agreed, and authorized the CIA to assist the BIS in overthrowing Mossadegh. The Shah at first attempted to formally dismiss Mossadegh, but this backfired and Mossadegh convinced the Shah to flee to Baghdad.
Regardless of this setback, the covert operation soon went into full swing, conducted from US Embassy in Tehran under the leadership of Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.. Agents were hired to facilitate violence; and, as a result, protests broke out across the nation. Anti- and pro-monarchy protestors violently clashed in the streets, leaving almost 300 dead. The operation was successful in triggering a coup, and within days, pro-Shah tanks stormed the capital and bombarded the Prime Minister's residence. Mossadegh surrendered, and was arrested on 19 August 1953. He was tried for treason, and sentenced to three years in prison.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was then reinstated as Shah. His rule became increasingly autocratic in the following years. With strong support from the US and UK, the Shah further modernized Iranian industry, but simultaneously crushed all forms of political opposition with his intelligence agency, SAVAK. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became an active critic of the Shah's modernization efforts and publicly denounced the government. Khomeini, who was popular in religious circles, was arrested and imprisoned for 18 months. After his release in 1964, Khomeini publicly criticized the United States government. The Shah was persuaded to send him into exile by General Hassan Pakravan. Khomeini was sent first to Turkey and then to Iraq. While in exile, he continued to denounce the Shah.
1979 saw an increase in protests against the Shah, culminating in the Iranian Revolution.
. . . etc. There are plenty of other examples.
If you want to control another nation's natural resources, and you want it to obey you and allow your military access to its land and air space, you don't make that nation prosperous, independent and free. You subjugate it and make sure it's dependent on you. Duh.
Unfortunately for us all, the GOP badly, badly miscalculated and essentially repeated our severe blunder in Iran - this time in Iraq, and this time even worse.
We went into Iraq, overthrew the native government, but the native muslim population has begged to differ with our plans, and is in the process of enacting their own, bloodier version of the Iranian Revolution and/or the post-coup Guatemalan civil war.
Worse for us is that we have our own troops caught up in the civil war we helped create (unlike Guatemala and Iran, when we used proxies to do our dirty work for us) and we're spending unbelievable sums of money on fighting a losing war.
The bottom line is that the GOP never intended on creating a prosperous and truly free Iraq, and they badly underestimated the level of chaos/violence that would result from their failure to do so. Now their hubris in thinking they could directly control an Islamic nation (like our proxies did for us in Iran for a couple of decades after Operation Ajax) in this day and age has come back to haunt us all.