Condi Rice just said this to Stephanopoulos on Meet the Press:
"Moving toward the creation of better Iraqi security forces. We have 100,000 trained now, 125,000 by the end of the year, 200,000 by the end of next year."That is an outright lie that's already been exposed by the media ALL THIS WEEK.
- ABC reported the night of the debate that the DOD" says there are only 50,000 Iraqi security forces fully trained.
- Reuters reported earlier this week that even that figure is a lie:
[Pentagon documents show that] of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. Another 46,176 are listed as "untrained".... 22,700 Iraqi personnel have received enough basic training to make them "minimally effective at their tasks," in contrast to the 100,000 figure cited by Bush.- And according to the same Pentagon document, the notion that we'll have 125,000 by the end of the year and 200,000 by the end of next year is also an outright lie that they keep repeating:
it will be July 2006 before the administration reaches its new goal of a 135,000-strong, fully trained police force.Stephanopoulos didn't say a thing about this, he let the lie stand.
