U.S. plans to close successful Iraqi police academy in Jordan

Firing range at the Jordan International Police Training Center

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration plans to shut down a highly successful Iraqi police academy in Jordan, the New York Daily News has learned.

The Jordan International Police Training Center near Amman will stop training Iraqi police recruits this year, having already graduated 40,000 police officers from its eight-week course since 2004, U.S. officials confirmed.

"The word we have is that JIPTC completes its mission on Dec. 31, and we are proceeding on that basis," said academy spokesman Iver Peterson.

President Bush has said American troops can come home from Iraq when Iraqi forces can secure their own country.

The $120 million Jordan academy is safe and has police trainers from 15 nations. It graduates a staggering 1,800 Iraqi police officers and border guards each month. Fewer than 4 percent have washed out.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., expressed shock when told by The News that the facility will soon close.

"It is mystifying and maddening that they would shut this down while violence in Iraq is spiraling out of control and in the face of an urgent shortage of trained police officers," said Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Senate subcommittee overseeing Iraq reconstruction funding.

The Jordan academy is located on a sprawling 560 acres, with firing lines, indoor firing ranges, areas where cadets learn to defuse bombs and a mess hall dishing up 12,000 meals a day.

But State Department officials who run the Pentagon-funded academy said Iraqi authorities want all training shifted to eight regional academies in Iraq, including Baghdad Police College - which has to be rebuilt because of bungled construction.

"Moving the functions of this facility to Iraq will add to the cost - especially for security - and subtract from these vital recruitment and training missions," Leahy said.

The Iraqi Police - apart from the paramilitary National Police linked to death squads - are routinely attacked at recruiting centers and stations. By some estimates, 12,000 of the 130,000-man force have been killed or wounded or have quit or been fired.

"They're under siege," said one U.S. official. "Their main focus is their own security."

"We are the one true Iraq success story," said another U.S. official in Jordan. "We train four times the number of any academy in Iraq, we don't have insurgent attacks and trainers who won't set foot in Iraq will work with us here."

Read the rest at the San Jose Mercury News

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