Editorial: Mission not accomplished

Saturday, Feb. 3, 2007 | 7:13 a.m.

Members of the Iraq Study Group told a Senate committee on Wednesday that the United States has failed to train an effective Iraqi police force largely because the wrong agencies were placed in charge of the effort.

According to a story by the Associated Press, Iraq Study Group members told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the task of creating a police force and a judicial system in the virtually lawless Iraqi nation was wrongly placed in the hands of the State Department and a cadre of private contractors who "did not have the expertise or the manpower to get the job done."

Then, in 2004, the task was assigned to the Defense Department, which spent more money on the mission but still was not adequately trained to do the job.

As a result, the Iraqi people have been left with a dysfunctional and corrupt judicial system and a police force that is virtually nonexistent, said former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the bipartisan commission.

The remedy, the group concluded, is to reassign the mission to the Justice Department and allow police officials and supervisors to train Iraqi police and judicial officials.

These comments and recommendations were part of the report the Iraq Study Group issued last year, but they are gaining renewed attention at a time when congressional support for Bush's war policy is waning in light of how the Bush administration has botched this war at every level.

A recent audit by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction shows that U.S. aid continues to be improperly spent or wasted. An Olympic-size swimming pool was built with $4.2 million of the $43.8 million that was earmarked for creating a police training facility, the audit shows. And more than $36 million was spent on body armor and other equipment that cannot be located.

These failures are an outrageous waste of taxpayers' money and have harmed the Iraqi people, who desperately need a government that they can trust.