This morning’s USA Today reports a spike in new trainees signing up with the Iraqi police forces in Anbar province:
The U.S. military is reporting a dramatic and unexpected increase in the number of police recruits in Anbar province, the center of Sunni insurgent activity in Iraq.
In the past two weeks, more than 1,000 applicants have sought police jobs in Ramadi, the provincial capital. Eight hundred signed up last month in Ramadi, said Army Maj. Thomas Shoffner, operations officer for the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division.
Those figures compare with only “a few dozen” recruits in September, the U.S. military said.
The reporter says that the flood of recruits relates to Sunni Iraqis’ disgust with al Qaeda, and no doubt that’s true. But I would think that President Bush’s speech, with its focus on Anbar and its commitment to step up our effort there rather than cutting and running, had something to do with the surge in recruits as well.
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