We pay a monthly stipend to the IRAQ Army and Ministry personnel.

[Gin]

Why not re-establish the Army and Ministiires using these people?
We pay them montly, so we must know who and where they are.

Iraq needs to become independent sooner rather than later.
Re-establish what we foolishly demolished. Bring our guys and gals home.

Life according to GIN. :)

[LittleApple81]

1. The problem is that now we don't know whom to trust there

The stipend is payola to keep them fed and avoid further attacks.

If we leave immediately, how is the American government going to be judged: go, kill, destroy Iraqi infrastructure, try to steal as much as you can as fast as you can for Bush/Cheney cronies, put billions of American taxpayer funds down a black hole, overextend our troops,, then leave Iraq destroyed and in civil war and total instability.

(sarcasm on)
This was supposed to be showcase of democracy and freedom in the middle east...
(sarcasm off)

[Gin]

2. Why not re-employ them to help....getting the population involved

isn't an exit strategy at this point. It can be a stabilizing
influence.

[LittleApple81]

3. The US is doing that right now.

Police training in Hungary, rehiring Iraqi soldiers and training them. I surely hope it works. It will take time, money, effort and I don't know if we have the attention span to do this.

[Gin]

4. We also need to enlist the help of Iraqi citizens to rebuild the cities.

Why does it seem so simple looking at it from the outside?

[LittleApple81]

5. There was another post earlier on in DU

Where a blogger from Iraq was telling the story of how an Iraqi construction company had given the US authority an estimate to rebuild a bridge for $300,000. This was rejected, and the American Bush/Cheney chosen company got the contract to rebuild it for 50 million dollars.