Every few days another car bomb kills dozens of well-intentioned Iraqis lining up to apply for jobs as policemen, or soldiers, or other civil servants. Can't a procedure be put in place that would avoid the need for them to congregate in a single place? Presumably they do this because of a first-come, first-served system of allocating jobs (or applications for jobs, or some such thing). At first, I imagined importing into Iraq dozens of those Take-A-Number machines used in bakeries and delis: take a number, get away from the building, come back later. But then I realized that this doesn't address the problem. Job seekers would still line up in order to be among the first to Take A Number, simply reproducing the problem. A better tack might be to replace the first-come, first-served system altogether. For instance, just say that all those who submit a name and phone # by a certain date will then be entered into a random lottery that will pick names one at a time for priority in application for the position. That way, there would be no reason for any crowd to bunch up outside the relevant building ... and no good target for a car bomb.
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Sure...they've had radio-controlled electronic queuing systems in resteraunts in the US for a while now.
You walk up, make a reservation. They hand you a piece of plastic with LEDs on it. When it's your turn, the LEDs flash.
You might have to improve the range some...the systems I've seen aren't any good past 20 yards.
You know, I don't think that we're really suffering from an oversupply of qualified Iraqi security forces applicants. As far as I can gather, we need as many as we can get -- even to the point that we're hiring many thousands that are unqualified or with suspicious loyalties. So queueing seems really unnecessary.
I'm sure that this has been thought of.....however if you stop the gunmen from tageting the easy pigeons they will immediately selct the next easiest. Since they have the man power but no target the manpower would be diverted to a new target model. This then would be your next problem. I could enviage the following.
a. Market places on shopping day.b. Security checkpoints.c. Attacks on individual homes.d. US and UK bases and patrols.e. Foreign countries like syria, jordan, iran, saudi. Where such attacks might lead to an escalation in kind or worse still those nations deciding to enter iraq to root out the culprits.f. lets leave it where it is shall we. I think the US military and Government have done enough fiddling about in Iraq and the minute they are out (eeven if this is fifty years from now) there will be a huge Civil war.
Who would ever have thought that Iraq was the only country in the world WITHOUT weapns of mass destruction.
I think the point we're missing here is that terrorists are going to be drawn to the Iraq conflict from all over the globe for as long as the US has a military presence there (I'm guessing two decades at least) and as long as there is an Israeli-Palestinian conflict to use to justify and rationalize violence. However, even if Palestine and Israel declared permanent peace on each other, there would be murderous sociopaths like Osama and his goons to spread death and destruction.
Terrorism only has a purpose if it is used to bring a more powerful opponent to the bargaining table. Its present use has nothing to do with "root causes" in the Middle East and even less to do with poverty and "lack of opportunity," it is simply wanton, purposeless killing for the sake of killing innocents. The Jihadists in the world are only interested in total destruction of other ideologies, and anyone, friend or foe, who gets in the way of that destruction: violence simply for the sake of violence.
Bargaining with them is a waste of time.
We need to have at least a few people killed by bombs in Iraq, in order to justify our continuing presence. Therefore, we should encourage them to congregate whenever possible. Otherwise, the anti-war types would want to declare victory and pull out. That would not be part of the plan, as it was presented to General Motors, Exxon, etc, by the neocons.