Glenn Reynolds linked to this IraqPundit analysis: Look Who’s Talking: The Case of Bayan Jabr and the Washington Post. Bayan Jabr has in fact been a disaster for Iraq in his interior minister role. That the Washington Post would credulously publish his maneuvers to deflect blame onto the Americans is remarkable.
It may be true that the FPS is factor in Shia-on-Sunni attacks. There is one non-Jabr source in the WaPo article:
…A senior U.S. military official, speaking on condition that he not be identified further, said Saturday he believed that members of the FPS, along with private militias, were the chief culprits behind Iraq’s death squads.
A bit of searching on the FPS topic mostly turns up stories sourced from Bayan Jabr, e.g., this Newsweek piece 17 April.
Read IraqPundit, see what you think:
Among the most difficult problems currently plaguing Iraqis is the fact that the police have been infiltrated by Shiite murder squads, and that thugs have been using the cops’ uniforms as a cover for payback murders against Sunnis and others.
Whose fault is this? Many if not most Iraqis place the blame on Bayan Jabr, who has headed the Interior Ministry under the Jaafari regime, and who thus has had responsibility for the cops. Jabr, who allowed the police to become an apparent arm of the Shiite militias, has personal connections with the largest of those militias: He was a leader of the Badr Brigades, the Iranian-trained force of SCIRI, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Obviously, Jabr was an awful choice for the role of interior minister, and was a significant factor in the Jaafari regime’s loss of trust and credibility. Restoring trust in the interior ministry must be a major objective of the new Maliki government.
Yet in recent days, Jabr has added a new public role to go with his “achievements” as a pro-Iranian militia leader and disastrous interior minister: He has become a source for The Washington Post on the issue of the infiltrated Iraqi police force. Using Jabr’s claims, the Post’s Ellen Knickmeyer has suggested that the ongoing campaign of terror against Sunnis is the work not only of militias, but to an unknown degree of the Facilities Protection Service (FPS), a largely uncontrolled body of guards that was originally established by the U.S.
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