A LITTLE MORE TRUTH LEAKS OUT

General backs off on US troop cuts in Iraq
Warns of strife as bombs kill 60
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff September 30, 2005

Casey and Abizaid told lawmakers that training Iraqis to take over for US and allied troops remains a struggle.

''We fully recognize that Iraqi armed forces will not have an independent capability for some time, because they don't have the institutional base to support them," Casey said.

He also said the new Iraqi government was recently unable to pay some of the 67,000 Iraqi police because of a breakdown in Iraqi government operations in some areas, such as Fallujah, where the insurgent presence is heavy.

There are ''continuing reports that the Iraqi police and security forces we're training are substantially infiltrated by insurgents," Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in questioning Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld responded, ''It's a problem that's faced by police forces in every major city in our country, that criminals infiltrate and sign up to join the police force."
[ANOTHER CANDIDATE FOR QUOTE OF THE YEAR]

However, the top US intelligence official said yesterday that the make-up and organization of the increasingly violent Iraq insurgency remains a puzzle to US officials 2 1/2 years after the US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein. John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, acknowledged yesterday that no one knows for sure, saying there is a ''feeling that much more could be still done in terms of finding out now what the nature of that insurgency is."