Good as his word …
“Nearly 100,000 fully trained <$NoAd$>and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers, and other security personnel are working today. And that total will rise to 125,000 by the end of this year. The Iraqi government is on track to build a force of over 200,000 security personnel by the end of next year. With the help of the American military, the training of the Iraqi army is almost halfway complete.”
President George W. Bush
News Conference with Prime Minister Allawi
September 23rd, 2004
“There’s 100,000 troops trained: police, guard, special units, border patrol. There’s going to be 125,000 trained by the end of this year.”
President George W. Bush
Presidential Debate
September 30th, 2004
And then this from Reuters, out today …
But many of these assertions have met with scepticism 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. Another 46,176 are listed as “untrained,” and it will be July 2006 before the administration reaches its new goal of a 135,000-strong, fully trained police force.
Six Army battalions have had “initial training,” while 57 National Guard battalions, 896 soldiers in each, are still being recruited or “awaiting equipment.” Just eight Guard battalions have reached “initial (operating) capability,” and the Pentagon acknowledged the Guard’s performance has been “uneven.”
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 centralised training to date, despite earlier claims they had, according to Democrats on the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee.
They estimated that 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.
Has any reporter asked the president or his advisors about this? They really do seem to be just making this stuff up …
