Six of 1,000 speak Arabic fluently at U.S. embassy in Iraq
After more than three years in their country, the U.S. military still can't understand Iraqis.
The Iraq Study Group said the lack of Arabic speakers has hurt U.S. intelligence collection and analysis. The bipartisan panel said the U.S. military and government rely too much on non-U.S. translators, who fail to provide context.
"As an intelligence analyst told us, 'We rely too much on others to bring information to us, and too often don't understand what is reported back because we do not understand the context of what we are told,'" the report said.
ISG said the U.S. embassy, with 1,000 staffers, has only a handful of fluent Arabic speakers. The embassy has 33 Arabic speakers, with six of them fluent.
"In a conflict that demands effective and efficient communication with Iraqis, we are often at a disadvantage," the report said. "There are still far too few Arab language-proficient military and civilian officers in Iraq, to the detriment of the U.S. mission."
The report said the United States faces great difficulties in recruiting civilians to work in Iraq. ISG cited the dangers of working in insurgency-ridden Iraq.
This is simply outrageous and completely unacceptable. It’s been five years since 911 and nobody has taken the necessary steps to learn the very language of “the axis of evil”??? I'd have thought this would’ve been the very FIRST step in fighting the war on terror. I would also be interested to know how many members of the CIA, FBI, and the Dept. of Homeland Security are fluent in Arabic.
All the wiretapping in the world won’t keep us safe if no one can speak the language they're eavesdropping on. But I suppose that it's too much to expect from a president who hasn’t even bothered to master his own native tongue.
9 comments:
Oh now Moogirl. Don't get all excited by the ISG report.
On Chapter 1 Page 1 they acknowledged that Iraq had the second largest oil reserves in the world. They soon proceeded to recommend privatising oil and having the US involved with it. More here.
And this too.
I know the whole of the ISG report blows, but this whole issue of nobody being able to speak Arabic has been a burr under my saddle for a few years now. My main issue was that nobody in the military could converse with the Iraqis. You gotta wonder how many deaths have occurred because of a simple language barrier.
No wonder they hate us. Don't any of them speak the official world language of English? Dammit anyway! ;)
I know. It's pretty pathetic and arrogant all at once.
Even when agencies like the FBI do have Arabic translators like Sibel Edmonds, they don't listen to them.
Which makes me wonder even if they had them, would it do any good. This isn't WWII with the Indians and their language to get an upper hand.
Another question I wonder about is whether it'd be better to dismantle the whole Department of Defense with that waste of money. It only came into existence at the end of Ike's administration. Before that it was the War Department, only for use during wars.
With the DoD, It's been never-ending wars and meddling of one sort or another along with massive budgets on and off the books. Vietnam, Latin America, Middle East, and on and on it goes. All so that the usual suspects in the "defense" industry can count on their revenue streams on and annual basis. They're bleeding this country dry and we're no safer at all. And they're not patriotic to this country, as most corporations aren't, only their bottom lines.
That's what's aggravating.
I'll go another step further. As long the DoD exists, there will always be conflicts of one sort or another.
The "defense" industry has to justify it's existence. It really is the military industrial complex Ike spoke of.
Exactly. How would you excuse the expense of the DoD if they weren’t defending us against anybody? Not that they’re actually doing that now, but you get my drift. You must have an enemy to justify the need for defense, a whole axis of enemies is even better.
Worse yet, how can they justify their existance when they can't win in either Vietnam or Iraq. Iraq especially. Their weapons were very low tech.
It's a very interesting picture when you tie all the different industry sectors together and end up with GWB and Cheney in the WH.
The United States of Rome (as in the Roman Empire fame).
"Their weapons were very low tech."
We ought to know, we gave 'em to them. And it is really something that they've turned into the foe that they have. Who would have thought they'd be harder to fight than the North Vietnamese?
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