April 20, 2005

Mr. President, I’d like to speak a little bit about Amendment 454, which was passed unanimously by the Senate last night. I appreciate and thank Senators Cochran and Byrd for the time they have spent working with me on this amendment. I also note and appreciate the work of Senators McConnell and Leahy on this matter. Their staff members, Paul Grove and Tim Rieser, were very helpful.

It is clear that success in Iraq and Afghanistan is dependent on how well and how fast we train security forces and police there.

It is also clear that the faster and better we train these forces, the sooner our troops can come home.

This amendment is designed to ensure that the training in Afghanistan – for which this bill dedicates more than $600 million, including $44.5 million dollars which is to be available only for the establishment of a pilot program to train local Afghan police forces – is handled well and is handled in an accountable fashion.

We have seen what happens when training is rushed or when accountability is ignored. The Haitian National Police we spent hundreds of millions of dollars training in the 1990s is all but disbanded. We are all familiar with the stories of mismanagement of police training in the Balkans. And just last week, Secretary Rumsfeld took an emergency trip to Baghdad to try to salvage some of the training we have done there as Shiite political leaders threaten to purge Sunni officials from the forces.

This amendment is meant to ensure that training in Afghanistan benefits from lessons learned and the mistakes of the past.

It adds commonsense provisions to the $660 million dollars appropriated for police and counter-narcotics programs in Afghanistan. We need to take this step because the challenges we face in training a capable security and police force in Afghanistan are perhaps even more daunting than in Iraq.

First, Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of poppy, the raw material for heroine. It produces 80% of the world’s heroine and, according to the United Nations, is currently producing dramatically more than it did under the control of the Taliban. Keep in mind that heroine use not only fuels crime throughout Europe and in the United States, but it funds terrorist organizations and is responsible for the looming AIDS crisis throughout eastern Europe.

Second, there are already several countries and organizations training forces in Afghanistan, including for the vitally important effort of counter-narcotics. In fact, this difficult task of building a capable law enforcement system in that formerly ruler-less country is divided among the United States, Italy, Great Britain and several different international organizations.

And third, the way the Administration has structured this program lends itself to confusion and competition among American agencies. The funding in the bill goes to the Department of Defense, but much of the police training will be handled by the State Department.

This amendment is an effort to make sure we can get the accountability our taxpayers deserve as well as the success that our national security demands.

I recognize good training will not be easy. I also understand that in post-conflict societies, it is often difficult to find good personnel. But I also recognize that we simply have to get better at how we train other people to take over security in their own countries.

The stress on our armed forces demands no less. The challenges facing U.S. taxpayers demand no less. And success in post-conflict societies demands no less.

Mr. President, before coming to the United States Senate, I had the honor of serving our great State of Colorado as Attorney General. In that job, I made Homeland Security my highest priority.

One of the responsibilities I had as Attorney General was chairman of the Peace Officers Standards and Training Board (P.O.S.T). Given all that our police officers and their families give for us and for our state, the least I could do was to fight for additional training and support resources.

In 2003, we did that, and in exchange we asked for greater accountability. We did that, too, and the result has been a better trained and more accountable police force, not to mention, a safer Colorado.

It has worked in Colorado and across this country, Mr. President. I believe with the adoption of this amendment we can start to make it happen in our police training overseas as well.

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