U.S. IS PAYING $500.000 A MONTH TO LOCAL IRAQI TRIBESMAN TO KEEP PEACE

You will NEVER hear FOX NEWS or the rest of the right wing media talk about how the U.S. government is paying local Iraqi tribesman $500,000 a month to try and keep peace in Anbar Province and in Baghdad.

All the phony right wing "news organizations" like FOX NEWS do is talk about the success of the "surge" in Iraq.

If someone held a .45 to the head of every news editor, producer and anchor person at FOX NEWS they still couldn't tell the truth about IRAQ.

The FOX NEWS sycophants march in lockstep with Bush and Cheney never telling the TRUTH about what is REALLY happening in IRAQ.

Here is just one example of what we mean:

Program in Iraq against al-Qaida faces uncertainty

US program to sponsor fighters in Iraq against al-Qaida faces uncertain future

HAMZA HENDAWIAP News
Jun 29, 2008 14:50 EST
http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=232119

Capt. David N. Simms wanted the tribal sheiks to have no doubts — the $500,000 his unit spends every month to pay and equip local tribesmen to keep peace here will soon run out and they had better be ready when it's gone.

Simms handed the sheiks 600 applications for a vocational school in nearby Baghdad. It's one option, he said, to prepare the men for life after he stops giving them salaries.

The "Sons of Iraq" are the estimated 80,000 fighters — mostly Sunni tribesmen and former insurgents — recruited and paid by the U.S. military to help fight al-Qaida and maintain security in neighborhoods, including this Sunni farming community west of Baghdad.

The program has been a remarkable success, helping reduce violence across the country by 80 percent since early 2007 at the cost of $216 million to date.

Nearly two years into the program, however, the U.S. is gradually handing over responsibility for the Sons of Iraq to the Shiite-led government. By January, the military hopes to turn the entire program over to the Iraqis.

But the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been reluctant to absorb large numbers of armed Sunnis into the Shiite-dominated security forces. American officials fear that many of the U.S.-backed fighters may turn their guns on the government unless jobs can be found for them.

"If we don't find work for the men, it will work against us," said Asaad Nawar al-Ameen, a retired general in Saddam's army who heads the Sons of Iraq in Radwaniyah. "Al-Qaida can get them."

The government already has accepted nearly 20 percent of Sons in Iraq members in the security forces and is pledging to find civilian jobs for most of the rest.

Meanwhile, it has introduced "support councils" made up of trusted tribal chiefs and their followers to support the security forces.

But that move is seen by leaders of the Sons of Iraq as an attempt to sideline them at a time when some of them are complaining that the Americans are abandoning them to a government they don't trust.