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Insurgents infiltrating police: US report

The vetting of recruits to Iraq's police force is so poor that many who join up have criminal records, are barely literate, or are members of the insurgency, a new US government report has concluded.

The report, compiled by Pentagon and state department officials and quoted in this week's Time magazine, said that while training for the new Iraqi police force had improved, there were still a number of serious problems.

According to Time, the report says that "too many recruits are marginally literate; some show up for training with criminal records or physical handicaps; and some recruits allegedly are ... insurgents."

The report adds to a recent assessment by the US military in Iraq that only half of the country's police battalions are capable of fighting insurgents.

The new report will make depressing reading for members of the Bush administration, whose exit strategy from Iraq rests on the ability of the nation's nascent security forces to gradually assume control of the country.

News that the Iraqi police are not up to scratch will come as no surprise to ordinary Iraqis, however, many of whom see little change in the brutality and corruption of the force under Saddam Hussein.

The loyalty of Iraqi police to the new authorities in Baghdad has also come under question, most notably last November in Mosul when three-quarters of the city's police force either abandoned their posts or assisted insurgents during an uprising.
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