Are Iraqi forces ready to take command? Despite optimism on the streets of the country, observers wonder whether the national security forces will be able to keep order     Martin Chulov in Baghdad guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 30 June 2009 12.16 BST Article history
Iraqi security forces celebrate in Ramadi, as they take control from US troops. Photograph: Karim Kadim/AP  Iraq now has close to 620,000 police officers and soldiers to call on, more than 25% more than when Saddam Hussein was ousted.However, with the streets of cities and towns now theirs alone to control, doubts linger about their readiness to take charge.Iraqi security forces are broken down into 350,000 police, among them local police and national forces, which take on a paramilitary role and can operate across most provinces.The Iraqi military, comprising a large army of 13 divisions and a much-smaller air force and navy, is 270,000 strong. It is considered the more competent of the two security forces and has been the focus of intensive training efforts by departing US forces.However, last October, the Pentagon assessed that only 17 of 175 army battalions were capable of undertaking counter-insurgency operations on their own. The assessment was worse for the National police – where only two of 34 battalions were up to the job, the US defence department claimed.Small special weapons and tactics units have been heavily mentored by US forces and international police groups. They are seen as the spearhead of counter-terrorism operations and are generally well regarded by their former commanders.However, serious concerns remain about local units, which US troops have regularly reported as sometimes lacking in motivation. Until recently, all units have been heavily dependent on US forces.Criminal investigation…

   The Dispiriting Legacy of Dick Cheney     HARVEY GEORGES/AP IMAGES
Dick Cheney (left) and Donald Rumsfeld in 1975  

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  Security consultant Frank Abagnale,the inspiration behind the movie Catch Me If You Can, fields questions Wednesday during a lecture at Millsaps College in Jackson. Abagnale went from a career of forgery and other crimes to becoming a top security expert for the government and banks. He advised attendees to shred important documents and stressed the need to instill ethics in young children.Read Article 

Richard Milhous McCain Sep 18th 2008
From The Economist print editionAmericans cannot escape from the shadow of Tricky Dick
Illustration by KAL MODERN Republicans admire no one more than Ronald Reagan, the man who, in their view, destroyed communism, rolled back welfare-state liberalism and reintroduced God into American politics. But when it comes to practising politics, particularly at election time, the Republicans have a rather different hero, a man of frowns rather than smiles: Richard Nixon. Nixon’s great contribution to Republican politics was to master the politics of cultural resentment. Before him, populism belonged as much to the left as the right. William Jennings Bryan railed against the eastern elites who wanted to crucify common folk on a “cross of gold”. Franklin Roosevelt dismissed Republicans as “economic royalists”. Nixon’s genius was to discover that the politics of culture could trump the politics of economics—and that populism could become a tool of the right. Nixon understood in his marrow how middle-class Americans felt about the country’s self-satisfied elites. The “silent majority” had been disoriented, throughout the 1960s, by the collapse of traditional moral values. And they had boiled with righteous anger at the liberal elites who extended infinite indulgence to bomb-throwing radicals while dismissing conservative views as evidence of racism and sexism. Nixon recognised that the Republicans stood to gain from “positive polarisation”: dividing the electorate over values. He also recognised that the media, which had always made a great pretence of objectivity while embracing a liberal social agenda, could be turned into a Republican weapon. He encouraged Spiro Agnew, his vice-president, to declare war on the “effete corps of impudent snobs” in the media, with their Ivy League educations and Georgetown social values.  Many people predicted that 2008 would finally mark the end of the Nixon era. The…