Well, it took long enough for them to notice, but it would finally seem someone in big media has finally clued in to the problem of training 85,000 police in a single year:

As the U.S.-led governing authority in Iraq attempts to build a security force of 220,000 in the next few months, the competing priorities of speed and thoroughness have prompted shortcuts in the recruiting and training process. The consequences are starting to become apparent.

Personally, I'm amazed it's going as well as it seems to be. All the Iraqi bloggers, even Riverbend (who hates everything), say nothing but good things about the new Iraqi police force*. Can you imagine the chaos if, say, New York City had to rebuild its entire police force from scratch in just six months? It'd probably look a lot like, well, a lot like Baghdad actually.

But in spite of the constant negative spin of the article, I find a lot of positive things:

According to investigations over the past four months by a newly formed internal affairs unit at the Interior Ministry, more than 200 Iraqi policemen in Baghdad have been dismissed and dozens of others have had their pay slashed for crimes ranging from pawning government equipment to extortion and kidnapping.

In other words, a brand new ministry formed a brand new investigative unit that immediately started to function, investigating security forces no less.

200 may sound like a lot, but, for comparison, New York City’s police department terminated 66 officers between June 2000 and August 2001 for perjury, other forms of false testimony, fraud, and falsifying records. An additional 33 officers were terminated during the same period for off-duty incidents relating to “narcotics possession, domestic incidents, alcohol-related incidents, and the failure to safeguard a firearm” (citation).

In the largest U.S. cities, about 1 applicant in 100 makes it through the process. In Baghdad, about one-third of applicants are being accepted.

66% are still being turned away. I was worried they were letting anyone in who could sign an "X" on the application and didn't have "Saddam Rules!" tatooed on their arm.

With salaries of $154 a month -- after a hazard raise last week because of the recent bombings of police stations -- the force assures a comfortable living.

This is critical, and therefore is of course buried deep inside the article. One of the tricks to efficient and effective law enforcement is to ensure each level of the system (police, lawyers, judiciary) sees that system as important and valuable, and not just a convenient way of financing their next trip to a Caspian Sea beach resort. It's hard to be incorruptible when you can't feed your kids.

Anyone with half a brain can figure out that hiring tens of thousands of people to become police in less than a year will create opportunities for chaos and corruption. That it took some six months for a primary big media outlet to do so is outrageous. That the resulting report spins faster than my daughter’s pinwheel is disappointing but completely unsurprising.