American commanders are assigning more than 2,000 Army military police advisers to work side by side with Iraq police officers in one of the most extensive efforts yet to team Americans with uniformed Iraqis.
The effort, a mission that entails significant new security risks for United States forces, is just starting in Baghdad. It will begin expanding to local stations and provincial and district headquarters in all 18 provinces by the end of the month. It greatly increases the size and scope of the current field training by 500 international civilian police advisers and some military police units, American military officials say.
About 80,000 local police officers across Iraq are now certified as trained and equipped, more than halfway toward the goal of 135,000 by early 2007.
But senior commanders, including Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American officer in Iraq, have vowed to make 2006 "the year of the police" in a tacit acknowledgment that corruption, ineptitude and infiltration in the Iraqi police forces stand in the way of any plan by the Americans to draw down troops this year...
2,000 More M.P.'s Will Help Train the Iraqi Police
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