BAGHDAD - Iraq’s beleaguered police force has had 12,000 officers killed as it battles insurgents and death squads to restore law and order to the war-torn country, the interior minister said Sunday. ‘Since the fall of the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein we have presented 12,000 martyrs to the Iraqi people,’ Jawad Bolani told reporters,’The officers of the Iraqi police have done glorious work.’The force now numbers 188,000 officers with varying degrees of training and equipment, and still faces daily attack by insurgent groups opposed to the US-backed regime, and by criminal gangs and sectarian militias.
| While some of the police are clearly thugs controlled by various factions and thugs, a fair number of them are just cops: trying to do a decent job in difficult circumstances. If Iraq is going to pull it together these are the guys who have to help make it happen. |