This is Progress?

From The Economist:
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Murder is certain

Mar 23rd 2006 | BAGHDAD AND RAMADI
From The Economist print edition

Three years after America invaded, Iraq is as violent as ever

...The police, under the Ministry of Interior, are in a much worse state [than the army] —and it is they who are expected eventually to quell the insurgency. So far, 123,000 have been trained and equipped (a total of 194,000 has been authorised). But they are of wildly mixed quality, with some of them barely trained. Worse, the best units, including several paramilitary brigades, have been infiltrated by various brutish Shia militias, and have launched reprisal attacks against Sunni civilians.

In November, American troops freed 123 famished Sunnis, some of whom had been tortured, from an interior-ministry basement in Baghdad. Coalition troops have also been attacked by the boys in blue, with several especially lethal IED attacks against British troops in Basra believed to be the work of rogue policemen there. In western Baghdad last month, shortly after the bombing of a sacred Shia shrine in Samarra, two American soldiers were sliced into pieces by an IED laid, during a curfew, within 50 yards of a police checkpoint.

Another great article from The Economist, ironically the #1 read on Air Force One. If you're not a subscriber, you should be.