Iraqi Police fight to stay alive
Despite the rhetoric you’ve heard from the left, the Iraqi Police are fighting the insurgency everyday, at great personal risk. From an Associated Press article, dated 26 NOV:
Officers have been shot while praying in mosques, killed by grenades lobbed into their living rooms, tortured and dumped in riverbeds, and obliterated by roadside bombs that shred their pickup trucks.
In October, 18 police officers were slain in Fallujah and its outskirts. That was down from the summer months, when an average of one policeman was killed every day.
“I’m a cop in Philly, but being a cop in Fallujah isn’t like being a cop in Philly,” said Maj. Brian Lippo, a Marine reservist from Philadelphia who heads a police transition team in the city. “These guys aren’t doing accident reports or domestic violence calls. They are hunted.”
Yet, there are still IPs who are out there every day patrolling the streets in their thin-skinned police cars.
Their faces covered and bodies bundled in flak jackets and Kevlar helmets, Iraqi officers on patrol move in groups of at least three to make it tougher for kidnappers and killers to strike. Afraid to head home, some sleep on narrow metal bunks on the station’s ground floor.
“They’re the bravest men I’ve ever seen,” said Lippo, of the 3rd Battalion, 14th Marine Regiment. “To get in a soft-skinned vehicle every day and drive on roads when you know there are (roadside bombs) everywhere is amazing.”
Yes, amazing. But, if you listen to the liberal side of the bloggosphere, we are just training terrorists in police tactics and giving them uniforms. And for those of you who say we should just pull up stakes and go home…
(Maj. Aziz Faisal Hamad, the police patrol commander) said he has his family change houses every three days to ensure their safety and has bodyguards take his children to school. He said Fallujah’s police force would crumble without the support of U.S. troops.
“We have coalition forces here now and so many of our officers are being killed,” he said. “Imagine if coalition forces left. How many officers would die?”
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