The Redhunter

One reason for the despair within the Baath Party is the improved performance of the Iraqi police. This is no accident. Late last year, two changes were made to how the United States recruited and deployed the Iraqi police. First, standards for recruitment were increased, and training made longer and more intense. As expected, this did not reduce the number of new recruits coming in, because being a cop was still one of the better paying, and available, jobs in the other country. But firing poorly performing cops and police commanders did wonders for the morale and performance of the good cops. The other change was to deploy trained police battalions to areas the cops were not native to. This was a technique even Saddam had to use. If you recruit all the cops from the area they will be working in, too many of those policemen will be corrupted by local criminals and bureaucrats. The corruption wasn’t always in the from of cash or favors. Threats against a cops family would work as well. This was what was happening to so many of the police recruited from areas where they were working, particularly in Sunni Arab areas. So the U.S. formed special police battalions, trained them a bit more, screened their commanders more thoroughly, and paid them a bonus to work away from home. These were mainly Kurdish and Shia Arab cops being sent to work in Sunni Arab areas.

Now go and read the whole thing, which you should be doing on a daily basis anyway.