In my CENTCOM e-mail today, this photo was mixed within some great news:

US CENTCOM Photo by Army Staff Sgt. Michael Skaar

Now, I just love it when the photo catches something ya just don’t see every day! No offense to the 1-158th or the 101st, I just made up the title as I was typing this posting. I couldn’t think of any other group other than the 101st to rhyme with “furry”. Sorry.

The story, Oklahomans Train Iraqi Police in Securing Baghdad, gives us some background into how the 1-158th Field Artillery of the Oklahoma National Guard is taking the time to train the Iraqi Police (IPs) the right way. Here’s a short snippet about how the new tactics they are learning are far different than the past under Saddam:

“In the past IPs never operated in quite the way that they do today and there were some growing pains at first”, said Sgt. Maj. Jimmy Venable of the 1-158th.

The IPs are coming around though and Venable went on to say that with each iteration of training the security situation continues to get better and better.

Training for the IPs has been mostly from the ground up, type of work since all police forces were disbanded when US troops first took control of Iraq said Venable. As a result US troops and contractors have begun with the basics, such as training the IPs in force protection (making sure that IPs are safe at their stations and in the streets) and investigation.

I suspect that there have been many trials and tribulations keeping the mission on track. It makes sense that to keep control, there needs to be some clear guidelines and cross-checks. Here, another key point made by Sgt. Maj. Jimmy Venable makes:

“One of the other situations that the 1-158th has to deal with is keeping the IPs autonomous from the influence of the local insurgency. The only resolution to this problem was to keep the IPs in the police station except when they are serving in their official capacity, sometimes they are even forced to stay” said Venable.

This should also have an effect on the overall effectiveness of insurgents, the IPs are making a big sacrifice staying at the station Venable added.

Keep it up guys, we’ve already turned the corner and are on the short stretch home!

Also posted at California Conservative

This entry was posted on Friday, June 16th, 2006 at 15:15 and is filed under ARMY, Commitment, GWOT, JointForces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.