We had some very special visitors today from the Baghdad Police College in Iraq. These four men have had the formidable task of raising up and training nearly 600,000 police officers for the entire nation of Iraq in a 7-year period. The U.S. Army selected the Kansas City Missouri Police Department as one of two in the nation for the Iraqi police officials to visit and learn training strategies from. The four men were escorted by U.S. Army Col. Randall Twitchell, who is currently stationed in Baghdad as chief adviser to the Baghdad Police College.
The visitors included:
* Major General Dr. Jasim Hassan Attia, who is Chief of the Training and Qualification Institute, Baghdad Police College. He also is Vice Deputy Minister of Training for Iraq. He is essentially responsible for the training of all 600,000 officers.
* Major General Ezat Nuail Aziz, who is Director General for the Delegations Institute. He is in charge of out-of-country training.
* Major General Riyadh Abdulbaqi Salman, who is dean of the three-year college program at Baghdad Police College.
* Colonel Sabah Hoshi Mohammed, who is Director for the Police Qualifications Center at the Baghdad Polcie College.
These VIPs also have visited the DEA, FBI and ATF in St. Louis and will soon check out Forts Leavenworth and Leanord Wood before going back to Iraq. The ATF arranged for their trip to the United States.
The leaders today said they were very impressed with the level of coordination and cooperation they saw among America's federal and local law enforcement agencies. They said they wanted the American public to know how much progress has been made in Iraq in the past several years and how far they've come in terms of peace and security. We are so happy they chose Kansas City Police as an agency to learn from, and we hope we have given them some great ideas to better train their police force to bring stability to their country.
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