Iraq’s President Harshly Criticizes U.S.Strategy by Kirk Semple

[applegrove]

Iraq’s President Harshly Criticizes U.S.Strategy
By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: December 10, 2006
The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Dec. 10 — President Jalal Talabani said Sunday that the American program to train Iraq’s security forces had been a repeated failure and he denounced a plan to increase the number of American advisers working with the Iraqi Army, saying it would subvert the country’s sovereignty.

Mr. Talabani’s remarks, in an interview with Western news service reporters that was later summarized and distributed by his office, amounted to an extraordinarily harsh denunciation of a central American strategy in Iraq as well as a major recommendation of the report issued last week by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group in Washington. He is the highest ranking Iraqi official to criticize the report, adding to anger among Iraqi leaders who have disagreed with some of its recommendations.

American commanders have poured more than $12 billion into training and equipping Iraq’s security forces and have tied a withdrawal of American troops to success in these efforts. But Mr. Talabani ridiculed them. “What have they done so far in training the army and the police?” he said. “What they have done is move from failure to failure.”

Mr. Talabani, who is Kurdish, said the Iraq Study Group report offered some “dangerous” recommendations that he said were “an insult to the Iraqi people” in that they undermined the country’s ability to control its own army and police.

...........SNIP"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/world/middleeast/10cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1165813200&en=a4700b9da95dd426&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[AIJ Alom]

1. If I were a puppet, and the hand that controlled all my actions

while allowing me to garner some prestige was told to pull out, I'd too would be angry and resistant. After all, who wants to be an empty sock, left in obscurity somewhere in a drawer.