FROM CAPITOL HILL
Iraq War Report
Starting Monday, follow LIVE coverage on C-SPAN3, C-SPAN Radio, & C-SPAN.org of Gen. David Petraeus & Amb. Ryan Crocker delivering their recom-
mendations on the situation in Iraq. They testify before several congressional cmtes.

Mon., 12:30pm: Joint Hearing

Tues., 9:30am: Senate For. Rel.

Tues., 2pm: Senate Armed Serv.


I am not as interested in what the managed message is as how much grilling particular senators will give the duo in the hearings, especially Senator Webb in the Armed Svcs Cmte on Tuesday and Biden/Kerry on the Foreign Relations Cmte. Especially since Biden just was there.

I was greatly disappointed at the testimony of Gen Jones, (ret) - no one ask any of those that appeared before the committees, two questions that I would love to see proposed - 1. How many full training sessions of Iraqi National Police and Iraqi Army were directly observed and 2. How many Iraqi citizens, non office holding, were invited to participate and offer their input about how they see the ground situation.

One reason I want to hear discussion on number one is that the reason for the slow "standing-up" by the nationals is that we don't have the capability for training because of the language problems. Ancilliary to that, how many teams of trainers were recruited from other countries in the ME and imported to help? From Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iran, Saudia Arabia, UAE, Dubai, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, -- the training might be accomplished more speedily and there might be a side benefit of making the teams representative of the group of countries, not have one team from one country in other words, build some cooperation and trust. Was any such effort ever considered or attempted? I wanna know.

And on numer 2, otherwise the information seems lobsided.

Who better to say how things are than ordinary Iraqis living in this hell every day?



lenal