http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070131/ap_on_go_co/us_iraqU.S. may have botched training of Iraqis
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago
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.
"The police training system has not gone well," said former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the bipartisan commission.
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.
"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."
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."