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Insight

Iraqi Police Force

Aired March 18, 2004 - 23:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST: A bad place to wear a badge. Iraq's new police force is short on equipment, experience and authority. Is it really ready to take on the terrorists?
Hello and welcome.

Experts from around the world are training a new police force for Iraq. For the most part, that means retraining the old cops to do a new kind of job in a new kind of country, a much more dangerous one. Iraqis have mixed feelings about their new police because of their links to the occupying forces, and the occupying forces have questions as well after some of their recruits were arrested last week, suspected of killing two Americans and their Iraqi translator.

On our program today, the new sheriffs in town.

Sheila MacVicar begins our coverage.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHEILA MACVICAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For these Iraqi police recruits, this is the final test. At the firing range of Baghdad Police Academy, watched over by their American instructors, these men, some young, some not so young, are preparing to graduate and join the ranks of what is now the most dangerous profession in Iraq.

"Fear exists," said Asad Fayad (ph). "We have to get beyond fear."

"Iraqis need security," says Adel Hassan (ph), "and I'm here to help bring security to my country."

But being a policeman is such a risky business in a country where there is still so little security that most of these recruits say they will not tell their neighbors who they work for.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the students was mugged out of his home because he had joined the police service. Not one other student left this academy because of that. They all want to be here.

MACVICAR: Even the police admit that in spite of the danger, there is a very compelling reason to join the force.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The main one is that there is no available opportunities to find a job or to find work.

MACVICAR: And that need for a living wage puts police on the streets on the frontlines of the war against insurgents. Because some see the police as collaborators with the occupation, they are targets, targets of assassins, targets of bombers. Since the war ended, more Iraqi policemen have died than American soldiers, hundred more. Back in January, a coalition official acknowledge more than 600 dead, and there are even more wounded.

The heroism of the police is recognized by the coalition in medal ceremonies like this. What is not recognized is the anger and betrayal many policemen and their families feel.

Officer Hadar (ph) was wounded last October. He's got a certificate for heroism, but no compensation. He's selling the family furniture to pay for his medical bills.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I've told the Interior Ministry that I'm selling everything and asked them to help just a little. They told me that I should go complain to the newspapers.

MACVICAR: At police stations across Baghdad, wounded officers complain they need medical care they cannot afford and cannot get.

Officer Ali percent, another bomb victim, needs eye surgery to remove shrapnel and glass. The Thedora (ph) Police Station, rebuilt after a bomb blast killed 15, Brigadier Ismail (ph) has been struggling for months to get compensation for his wounded officers, including Officers Haider (ph) and Ali (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The Ministry of the Interior says go to the hospital. The hospitals say they can't treat our men because the costs are too high, so our men either pay or get nothing.

MACVICAR: Iraq's Ministry of the Interior, responsible for the police, says it doesn't have the budget. The coalition says it's the responsibility of the ministry and there is supposed to be a program in place. The official police spokesman says.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ((UNINTELLIGIBLE) police officer.

MACVICAR: And some of Iraq's policemen, survivors of bomb blasts and assassination attempts, say that without the certainty that they and their families will be cared for, they will no longer report for duty.

The officers warn the enthusiasm of new recruits, so essential to the security of Iraq, will not last long.

Sheila MacVicar, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: We take a break. When we come back, the men who help train the Iraqi police force.

Stay with us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The best way to defeat the terrorists is to enlist the aid and allow those who live in the region to take (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for the responsibility while making sure they have the tools and the training to do so. That's where we are. So, yes, we're ready. There is fight left to be fought.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Iraqi police have done magnificent work, and they have demonstrated a great deal of courage, of commitment, to rebuilding Iraq on a new basis. Yes, they have suffered a great deal. Our security and police institutions really are in the process of development, of being rehabilitated, and some of them have been established from scratch. It will take time until these institutions become mature or efficient.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: The U.S. government doesn't entirely trust the police to protect it in Baghdad. The "Washington Post" reported Thursday that the Coalition Provisional Authority plans to reorganize security in the Green Zone, the sprawling compound where many Americans work and a regular target for attack. Once U.S. troops withdraw from duty there, the "Post" says Washington plans to budget as much as $100 million to hire private security firms.

Welcome back.

The United States isn't withdrawing from Iraq, but it is scaling back and down, hoping to move its soldiers from the center of major urban areas, like Baghdad, and hoping to reduce its overall troop presence in the country.

It means the job of making the country safe will only fall more heavily on Iraqis themselves, and on Wednesday Iraq's deputy prime minister told CNN that's just what should happen.

A short while ago we talked with Bernard Kerik, the former police commisser for New York City. Kerik served as interim minister for the interior for Iraq and senior policey advisor to the U.S. presidential advisor in Iraq, and he helped train the new cops trying to get them ready.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BERNARD KERIK, FMR. NEW YORK CITY POLICE COMMISSIONER: Well, I don't think they're ready today, and I don't think they'll be ready totally in the next year or so. We are standing up as many as possible. In the time that I was there in four months, we brought back about 40,000. They have to be trained. And we had to begin a recruiting process, which has already begun, and a number of Iraqi policemen now being trained in Jordan. So the objective is about 75,000 to 80,000 civil police officers. They're up to probably around 55,000, 60,000, I would say, but they have a long way to go before they're at full strength, and that's when they'll be most effective.

MANN: Now most of the police officers today and in the months to come will be police officers who served under Saddam Hussein, obviously a very different style of government. Are they good cops?

KERIK: Well, for the most part, Jonathan, what we've tried to do is create an environment where we started training them in a transitionary and integration course, to teach them policing principles in a democratic society. And for the most part, it worked. Where it didn't work, we got rid of it. We fired them, terminated them or had them retire.

So the ones that we did bring back, the ones that we stood up and that we thought we could train, we did. In the meantime, we continued to recruit and hire new people, and the key behind their success going forward is to standup ad many as possible, but also keeping in mind that they have to be vetted, we have to make sure that the people brought in, trained, the new recruits, are people that are going to be loyal to the new Iraq and not the old.

MANN: I want to ask you about that, because of course you heard about the arrest of four police officers suspected of killing two Americans and their translator. How worrying is that trend? How easy do you think it's going to be for enemies of the new Iraq, for enemies of the United States, to use the police to attack them?

KERIK: Well, it is a concern and it's a concern that the U.S. military at this point has to deal with. They've been dealing with. But it's essential to make sure that we have the right leadership in place on the Iraqi side.

You know, I as a U.S. policy advisor or even the military police that oversea and work in conjunction with these units, they don't know these people. The Iraqis do. So if you pick the right leadership, you have the right leaders in place, they will be able to vet out the bad, get rid of them, arrest them, kill them, whatever has to be done, and then move on, but we can't -- we have to make sure that we have a vetting process, and it's up to the Iraqis. We're not going to be able to do that.

MANN: Let me just ask you about the job that these men face. How hard is it to be a cop in Baghdad compared to, say, New York?

KERIK: It's extremely difficult. It's difficult because basically now, even today, with the resistance there, you're still working, operating on a daily basis, in a war zone. There are still issues with equipment, although we have been extremely successful over the last year in providing them with the equipment they need. There is still a lot more to come. The training issues have to be resolved. We have to make sure that they're trained in these principles of policing in a democratic society.

You know, they have to understand, they can't torture, intimidated, there can't be civilian rights violations and human rights violations and all the things that they were doing in the past for Saddam.

It is extremely difficult to work in Iraq today, but I realized in my time here, they're extremely courageous, they're very dedicated, and I think for those that lived under the rule of Saddam for 35 years, this is their chance to live in freedom, and I think they're not going to lose it.

MANN: Are they being short changed, though? They complain about, as you mention, the lack of equipment, about very low wages, about problems even for officers wounded in the line of duty getting adequate medical care.

KERIK: Well, the officers that were injured in the line of duty when I was in Iraq, I made sure they got medical care through the U.S. military. I was -- my people were involved in gun battles. I had an officer that was shot. They had to remove his spleen. He was treated by our people, by the coalition forces. So we try to do that as much as physically possible.

As far as the wages, I know they complain today, but you also have to know that their wages have been tripled since the fall of the Saddam regime, and that will probably continue as the economics of Iraq grow. So it just take time.

As far as equipment, we've been brining in equipment, brining in the handguns, the uniforms, the vehicles and all the stuff they need. It just takes time to purchase that stuff, get it into the country, get it into the units that need it. And it's being done as fast as possible. It just takes a little time.

MANN: How long is it going to take for them to get the respect and trust and cooperation of the Iraqi people, do you think?

KERIK: Well, I thikn that transition has already begun and I think, you know, you have to look at the history of the Iraqi civil police. They were Saddam's black sheep. They were the ones that went out there and intimidated and tortured and did a variety of very bad things.

Well, today the Iraqi people see those cops that are on the streets as liberators. They're fighting. They're defending them. They are -- you know, the everyday criminal activity has been reduced substantially since we went into Iraq a year ago, so who has done that? The U.S. military has done it in conjunction with the Iraqi police, but the Iraqi police have a substantial piece of that.

So the Iraqi people see it, they feel it, and I think they feel 10- times better about them today than they did a year ago, but that's only, you know, it's only going to get better with time.

MANN: Bernard Kerik, former interim minister of the interior for Iraq, and former police commission for New York City. Thanks so much for talking with us.

KERIK: Jonathan, thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: We take a break now. When we come back, a look at the past year in Iraq.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: Most of the pictures coming out of Iraq show scenes of terror and instability, but a new poll reveals a surprising optimism among Iraqis about their future. Nearly 60 percent of Iraqis surveyed said the situation in Iraq is better than it was a year ago. Just over 70 percent said they expected conditions in their lives to be better a year from now.

No matter how optimistic Iraqis might feel about their future, they are less optimistic about security. Only 4 in 10 people expressed confidence in coalition troops. The same amount thought the invasion should never have happened.

A short while ago, Christopher Hitchens, a contributing editor to "Vanity Fair" magazine and author of the book "Iraq: A Long Short War," shared his thoughts with us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, AUTHOR: The things that I noticed on my last visit to Iraq, which was last summer, were the following.

The ecology of the Marsh Arabs, the largest wetland in the Middle East, who had been burned out, dried out and destroyed and evacuated by Saddam Hussein, is being restored. The worst ecological atrocity of the last 1/4-century and it's being somewhat undone.

The Kurdish people in Northern Iraq are enjoying an extraordinary level by any standard, not just Iraqi but regional standard, of self- government and democracy and development.

The Shia people of Iraq constitute very nearly a majority, but not an absolute one, are free to pursue their religious rituals and observances and their pilgrimages.

The whole country is awash with satellite dishes, newspapers, political parties, and discussions. This is an extraordinary gain, and the psychopathic crime family that ran the country and ran it into the ground and menaced its neighbors is either dead or in jail. These are all unequivocal gains.

That there are bombs who wish to thwart the further development of this shouldn't surprise anyone. There are bombs in Istanbul. They're in Senegal. There are bombs in Morocco. There are bombs in (UNINTELLIGIBLE) put in mosques. There are bombs in train stations in Madrid. These are all the same bomb. To me, they're all the same bomb.

We are in a war with the forces of Islamic jihad, not with terrorism but with Islamic jihad specifically, with its attempt to destroy, degrade and enslave the Muslim world. It's a privilege to be at war with these people. I'd be worried if there wasn't violence about it.

Don't forget, they're getting killed too and they're going to get killed more and more, and more and more (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and more and more piteously, and that combat, it's an honor to take part in, as well as a duty and a necessity.

MANN: There are some people, some informed people, who say, though, that this war would not have happened I quite the same way if there had been, for example, better planning before the U.S. launched it's.

(CROSSTALK)

MANN: Thousands more U.S. troops devoted both to the battle and to the occupation. However well things are going, they could have spared a lot of lives by just planning better.

KERIK: There can be no doubt about that, and with anyone who says this should have been a much larger, better prepared and more decisive intervention in Iraq, I have no quarrel.

MANN: What do you think is going to happen on June 30, because one of the differences between Iraq and the places you mentioned, where there have also been terrorist attacks, is that they have well-established governments Iraq doesn't and it's going to have a very fragile one come June 30. Do you think this is a country that's going to be in any position to have sovereignty in any significant sense (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

KERIK: It doesn't have one, which is why it needs one. I mean, you couldn't have a society that was more fractures and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) than that of Afghanistan, which also has its religious and confessional and ethnic and linguistic divides, but it's quite extraordinary, the extent to which discrepant forces in Afghanistan, whether religions or linguistic and regional, were prepared to sink at least some of their differences in a body and constitution and in preparing for the election.

And Afghanistan, I don't mean to say anything in its disfavor, but it was culturally and economically and socially very, very behind Iraq with a peace (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that's very (UNINTELLIGIBLE) by this population spread out as refugees, in appalling poverty and degradation.

The level that Afghanistan has increased I'm certain can be replicated in some form in Iraq and it's the clear wish of the Iraqi people and we have no right to abandon them in this crucial moment.

MANN: Let me ask you about that, because the United States says it will stay the course in Iraq. It's fairly clear that it really must if Iraq is to succeed. Do you think the United States will?

KERIK: Oh, yes. I mean, there are people in Washington who don't want to do this and never did, principally in the State Department and in the Central Intelligence Agency. They didn't want (UNINTELLIGIBLE) change. They thought it would be destabilizing. They're not just dissatisfied with the difficulties of it.

There sre the political forces who, shall we say, display a certain (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for it at any difficulty or reveres.

But the plain fact of the matter is that at least since the U.N. mandate for the republic of kuwait in effect morally as well as politically, Iraq has been an American responsibility. It's not something we can decide.

We have adopted the Iraqi people, and if that sounds patronizing to them, they have a right to say they'd like to call off the adoption. If they do that, they're pushing it an open door. The United States doesn't want o keep its courses though, doesn't want to make it into a column. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a society that is being threatened by the same forces that we are, the forces of madellism and Jihad. We're all on a common front with them and the only real guerilla fighters, the only real insurgency in Iraq, namely the British meshmerga who are on our side, we'll fight against the enemies of civilization everywhere.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: Christopher Hitchens. That's INSIGHT for this day. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.

END

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Aired March 18, 2004 - 23:00:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST: A bad place to wear a badge. Iraq's new police force is short on equipment, experience and authority. Is it really ready to take on the terrorists?
Hello and welcome.

Experts from around the world are training a new police force for Iraq. For the most part, that means retraining the old cops to do a new kind of job in a new kind of country, a much more dangerous one. Iraqis have mixed feelings about their new police because of their links to the occupying forces, and the occupying forces have questions as well after some of their recruits were arrested last week, suspected of killing two Americans and their Iraqi translator.

On our program today, the new sheriffs in town.

Sheila MacVicar begins our coverage.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHEILA MACVICAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For these Iraqi police recruits, this is the final test. At the firing range of Baghdad Police Academy, watched over by their American instructors, these men, some young, some not so young, are preparing to graduate and join the ranks of what is now the most dangerous profession in Iraq.

"Fear exists," said Asad Fayad (ph). "We have to get beyond fear."

"Iraqis need security," says Adel Hassan (ph), "and I'm here to help bring security to my country."

But being a policeman is such a risky business in a country where there is still so little security that most of these recruits say they will not tell their neighbors who they work for.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the students was mugged out of his home because he had joined the police service. Not one other student left this academy because of that. They all want to be here.

MACVICAR: Even the police admit that in spite of the danger, there is a very compelling reason to join the force.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The main one is that there is no available opportunities to find a job or to find work.

MACVICAR: And that need for a living wage puts police on the streets on the frontlines of the war against insurgents. Because some see the police as collaborators with the occupation, they are targets, targets of assassins, targets of bombers. Since the war ended, more Iraqi policemen have died than American soldiers, hundred more. Back in January, a coalition official acknowledge more than 600 dead, and there are even more wounded.

The heroism of the police is recognized by the coalition in medal ceremonies like this. What is not recognized is the anger and betrayal many policemen and their families feel.

Officer Hadar (ph) was wounded last October. He's got a certificate for heroism, but no compensation. He's selling the family furniture to pay for his medical bills.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I've told the Interior Ministry that I'm selling everything and asked them to help just a little. They told me that I should go complain to the newspapers.

MACVICAR: At police stations across Baghdad, wounded officers complain they need medical care they cannot afford and cannot get.

Officer Ali percent, another bomb victim, needs eye surgery to remove shrapnel and glass. The Thedora (ph) Police Station, rebuilt after a bomb blast killed 15, Brigadier Ismail (ph) has been struggling for months to get compensation for his wounded officers, including Officers Haider (ph) and Ali (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The Ministry of the Interior says go to the hospital. The hospitals say they can't treat our men because the costs are too high, so our men either pay or get nothing.

MACVICAR: Iraq's Ministry of the Interior, responsible for the police, says it doesn't have the budget. The coalition says it's the responsibility of the ministry and there is supposed to be a program in place. The official police spokesman says.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ((UNINTELLIGIBLE) police officer.

MACVICAR: And some of Iraq's policemen, survivors of bomb blasts and assassination attempts, say that without the certainty that they and their families will be cared for, they will no longer report for duty.

The officers warn the enthusiasm of new recruits, so essential to the security of Iraq, will not last long.

Sheila MacVicar, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: We take a break. When we come back, the men who help train the Iraqi police force.

Stay with us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The best way to defeat the terrorists is to enlist the aid and allow those who live in the region to take (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for the responsibility while making sure they have the tools and the training to do so. That's where we are. So, yes, we're ready. There is fight left to be fought.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Iraqi police have done magnificent work, and they have demonstrated a great deal of courage, of commitment, to rebuilding Iraq on a new basis. Yes, they have suffered a great deal. Our security and police institutions really are in the process of development, of being rehabilitated, and some of them have been established from scratch. It will take time until these institutions become mature or efficient.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: The U.S. government doesn't entirely trust the police to protect it in Baghdad. The "Washington Post" reported Thursday that the Coalition Provisional Authority plans to reorganize security in the Green Zone, the sprawling compound where many Americans work and a regular target for attack. Once U.S. troops withdraw from duty there, the "Post" says Washington plans to budget as much as $100 million to hire private security firms.

Welcome back.

The United States isn't withdrawing from Iraq, but it is scaling back and down, hoping to move its soldiers from the center of major urban areas, like Baghdad, and hoping to reduce its overall troop presence in the country.

It means the job of making the country safe will only fall more heavily on Iraqis themselves, and on Wednesday Iraq's deputy prime minister told CNN that's just what should happen.

A short while ago we talked with Bernard Kerik, the former police commisser for New York City. Kerik served as interim minister for the interior for Iraq and senior policey advisor to the U.S. presidential advisor in Iraq, and he helped train the new cops trying to get them ready.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BERNARD KERIK, FMR. NEW YORK CITY POLICE COMMISSIONER: Well, I don't think they're ready today, and I don't think they'll be ready totally in the next year or so. We are standing up as many as possible. In the time that I was there in four months, we brought back about 40,000. They have to be trained. And we had to begin a recruiting process, which has already begun, and a number of Iraqi policemen now being trained in Jordan. So the objective is about 75,000 to 80,000 civil police officers. They're up to probably around 55,000, 60,000, I would say, but they have a long way to go before they're at full strength, and that's when they'll be most effective.

MANN: Now most of the police officers today and in the months to come will be police officers who served under Saddam Hussein, obviously a very different style of government. Are they good cops?

KERIK: Well, for the most part, Jonathan, what we've tried to do is create an environment where we started training them in a transitionary and integration course, to teach them policing principles in a democratic society. And for the most part, it worked. Where it didn't work, we got rid of it. We fired them, terminated them or had them retire.

So the ones that we did bring back, the ones that we stood up and that we thought we could train, we did. In the meantime, we continued to recruit and hire new people, and the key behind their success going forward is to standup ad many as possible, but also keeping in mind that they have to be vetted, we have to make sure that the people brought in, trained, the new recruits, are people that are going to be loyal to the new Iraq and not the old.

MANN: I want to ask you about that, because of course you heard about the arrest of four police officers suspected of killing two Americans and their translator. How worrying is that trend? How easy do you think it's going to be for enemies of the new Iraq, for enemies of the United States, to use the police to attack them?

KERIK: Well, it is a concern and it's a concern that the U.S. military at this point has to deal with. They've been dealing with. But it's essential to make sure that we have the right leadership in place on the Iraqi side.

You know, I as a U.S. policy advisor or even the military police that oversea and work in conjunction with these units, they don't know these people. The Iraqis do. So if you pick the right leadership, you have the right leaders in place, they will be able to vet out the bad, get rid of them, arrest them, kill them, whatever has to be done, and then move on, but we can't -- we have to make sure that we have a vetting process, and it's up to the Iraqis. We're not going to be able to do that.

MANN: Let me just ask you about the job that these men face. How hard is it to be a cop in Baghdad compared to, say, New York?

KERIK: It's extremely difficult. It's difficult because basically now, even today, with the resistance there, you're still working, operating on a daily basis, in a war zone. There are still issues with equipment, although we have been extremely successful over the last year in providing them with the equipment they need. There is still a lot more to come. The training issues have to be resolved. We have to make sure that they're trained in these principles of policing in a democratic society.

You know, they have to understand, they can't torture, intimidated, there can't be civilian rights violations and human rights violations and all the things that they were doing in the past for Saddam.

It is extremely difficult to work in Iraq today, but I realized in my time here, they're extremely courageous, they're very dedicated, and I think for those that lived under the rule of Saddam for 35 years, this is their chance to live in freedom, and I think they're not going to lose it.

MANN: Are they being short changed, though? They complain about, as you mention, the lack of equipment, about very low wages, about problems even for officers wounded in the line of duty getting adequate medical care.

KERIK: Well, the officers that were injured in the line of duty when I was in Iraq, I made sure they got medical care through the U.S. military. I was -- my people were involved in gun battles. I had an officer that was shot. They had to remove his spleen. He was treated by our people, by the coalition forces. So we try to do that as much as physically possible.

As far as the wages, I know they complain today, but you also have to know that their wages have been tripled since the fall of the Saddam regime, and that will probably continue as the economics of Iraq grow. So it just take time.

As far as equipment, we've been brining in equipment, brining in the handguns, the uniforms, the vehicles and all the stuff they need. It just takes time to purchase that stuff, get it into the country, get it into the units that need it. And it's being done as fast as possible. It just takes a little time.

MANN: How long is it going to take for them to get the respect and trust and cooperation of the Iraqi people, do you think?

KERIK: Well, I thikn that transition has already begun and I think, you know, you have to look at the history of the Iraqi civil police. They were Saddam's black sheep. They were the ones that went out there and intimidated and tortured and did a variety of very bad things.

Well, today the Iraqi people see those cops that are on the streets as liberators. They're fighting. They're defending them. They are -- you know, the everyday criminal activity has been reduced substantially since we went into Iraq a year ago, so who has done that? The U.S. military has done it in conjunction with the Iraqi police, but the Iraqi police have a substantial piece of that.

So the Iraqi people see it, they feel it, and I think they feel 10- times better about them today than they did a year ago, but that's only, you know, it's only going to get better with time.

MANN: Bernard Kerik, former interim minister of the interior for Iraq, and former police commission for New York City. Thanks so much for talking with us.

KERIK: Jonathan, thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: We take a break now. When we come back, a look at the past year in Iraq.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: Most of the pictures coming out of Iraq show scenes of terror and instability, but a new poll reveals a surprising optimism among Iraqis about their future. Nearly 60 percent of Iraqis surveyed said the situation in Iraq is better than it was a year ago. Just over 70 percent said they expected conditions in their lives to be better a year from now.

No matter how optimistic Iraqis might feel about their future, they are less optimistic about security. Only 4 in 10 people expressed confidence in coalition troops. The same amount thought the invasion should never have happened.

A short while ago, Christopher Hitchens, a contributing editor to "Vanity Fair" magazine and author of the book "Iraq: A Long Short War," shared his thoughts with us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, AUTHOR: The things that I noticed on my last visit to Iraq, which was last summer, were the following.

The ecology of the Marsh Arabs, the largest wetland in the Middle East, who had been burned out, dried out and destroyed and evacuated by Saddam Hussein, is being restored. The worst ecological atrocity of the last 1/4-century and it's being somewhat undone.

The Kurdish people in Northern Iraq are enjoying an extraordinary level by any standard, not just Iraqi but regional standard, of self- government and democracy and development.

The Shia people of Iraq constitute very nearly a majority, but not an absolute one, are free to pursue their religious rituals and observances and their pilgrimages.

The whole country is awash with satellite dishes, newspapers, political parties, and discussions. This is an extraordinary gain, and the psychopathic crime family that ran the country and ran it into the ground and menaced its neighbors is either dead or in jail. These are all unequivocal gains.

That there are bombs who wish to thwart the further development of this shouldn't surprise anyone. There are bombs in Istanbul. They're in Senegal. There are bombs in Morocco. There are bombs in (UNINTELLIGIBLE) put in mosques. There are bombs in train stations in Madrid. These are all the same bomb. To me, they're all the same bomb.

We are in a war with the forces of Islamic jihad, not with terrorism but with Islamic jihad specifically, with its attempt to destroy, degrade and enslave the Muslim world. It's a privilege to be at war with these people. I'd be worried if there wasn't violence about it.

Don't forget, they're getting killed too and they're going to get killed more and more, and more and more (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and more and more piteously, and that combat, it's an honor to take part in, as well as a duty and a necessity.

MANN: There are some people, some informed people, who say, though, that this war would not have happened I quite the same way if there had been, for example, better planning before the U.S. launched it's.

(CROSSTALK)

MANN: Thousands more U.S. troops devoted both to the battle and to the occupation. However well things are going, they could have spared a lot of lives by just planning better.

KERIK: There can be no doubt about that, and with anyone who says this should have been a much larger, better prepared and more decisive intervention in Iraq, I have no quarrel.

MANN: What do you think is going to happen on June 30, because one of the differences between Iraq and the places you mentioned, where there have also been terrorist attacks, is that they have well-established governments Iraq doesn't and it's going to have a very fragile one come June 30. Do you think this is a country that's going to be in any position to have sovereignty in any significant sense (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

KERIK: It doesn't have one, which is why it needs one. I mean, you couldn't have a society that was more fractures and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) than that of Afghanistan, which also has its religious and confessional and ethnic and linguistic divides, but it's quite extraordinary, the extent to which discrepant forces in Afghanistan, whether religions or linguistic and regional, were prepared to sink at least some of their differences in a body and constitution and in preparing for the election.

And Afghanistan, I don't mean to say anything in its disfavor, but it was culturally and economically and socially very, very behind Iraq with a peace (UNINTELLIGIBLE) that's very (UNINTELLIGIBLE) by this population spread out as refugees, in appalling poverty and degradation.

The level that Afghanistan has increased I'm certain can be replicated in some form in Iraq and it's the clear wish of the Iraqi people and we have no right to abandon them in this crucial moment.

MANN: Let me ask you about that, because the United States says it will stay the course in Iraq. It's fairly clear that it really must if Iraq is to succeed. Do you think the United States will?

KERIK: Oh, yes. I mean, there are people in Washington who don't want to do this and never did, principally in the State Department and in the Central Intelligence Agency. They didn't want (UNINTELLIGIBLE) change. They thought it would be destabilizing. They're not just dissatisfied with the difficulties of it.

There sre the political forces who, shall we say, display a certain (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for it at any difficulty or reveres.

But the plain fact of the matter is that at least since the U.N. mandate for the republic of kuwait in effect morally as well as politically, Iraq has been an American responsibility. It's not something we can decide.

We have adopted the Iraqi people, and if that sounds patronizing to them, they have a right to say they'd like to call off the adoption. If they do that, they're pushing it an open door. The United States doesn't want o keep its courses though, doesn't want to make it into a column. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a society that is being threatened by the same forces that we are, the forces of madellism and Jihad. We're all on a common front with them and the only real guerilla fighters, the only real insurgency in Iraq, namely the British meshmerga who are on our side, we'll fight against the enemies of civilization everywhere.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANN: Christopher Hitchens. That's INSIGHT for this day. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.

END

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