Iraqi Police Chief Arrested in Mass Kidnapping

Interior Ministry arrests 5 senior police officers in mass kidnapping

BAGHDAD, Iraq: The Interior Ministry said it arrested five senior police officers Tuesday night in connection with a mass kidnapping of as many as 150 people earlier in the day at a Higher Education Ministry office.

Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalaf, the Interior Ministry spokesman, said those arrested included the police chief for Karradah, the central Baghdad neighborhood where the Higher Education Ministry facility was located.

Also taken into custody were the commander of the police brigade in charge of the area and three other officers, Khalaf said.

The kidnapping was carried out by gunmen wearing Interior Ministry commando uniforms.

A promising sign of the elimination of internal corruption, but 150 people in one shot? That’s outrageous. I’m wondering if these might be Baathists who have reinfiltrated the police department – that would be a manifestation of the dangers of not breaking up the Iraqi security forces, as I discussed in an earlier post.

UPDATE: This article has more information, and seems to be leaning towards blaming Shiites in the police force. Some of the hostages have been released, but as many as 50 are still missing.

Those Chinese rascals

A Chinese submarine shadowed a US Naval carrier battle group, and surfaced within torpedo range in deep waters off of Okinawa. This was a clear statement from the Chinese, meant to demonstrate their reach and capabilities, as part of a longer term effort to weaken US influence in Asia. China has been working behind the scenes to make trouble for the US, but working with their economy is so beneficial that we appear to have done little in response.

From a military perspective, the incident surprised our analysts for 3 reasons:

• We didn’t know their submarines were that stealthy
• We were surprised that they followed our fleet so far from China
• We hadn’t seen them operating much in deep water

How did they get so good? Here’s a hint:

On the question of more troops – addendum

What would be more effective in maintaining peace in Iraq?

a) More troops

b) Pressure on Iran and Syria to stop destabilizing the country

I don’t think the lack of troops is our biggest problem there.

On the question of more troops

Rumsfeld’s resignation has led to a lot of reflection on his performance in Iraq. There are two standard components of the “Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld screwed up in Iraq” mantra. The first is that dissolving the Iraqi security forces was a mistake of Brobdingnagian proportions. The second is that we should have listened to Shinseki et al., and used more troops. In both cases critics generally talk out of both sides of their mouths, and ignore the consequences of implementing these “obvious” policies.