Badr Boys, Badr Boys, What You Gonna Do?

Guardian Baghdad correspondant Jonathan Steele claims the country's Interior Ministry "is refusing to deploy thousands of police recruits who have been trained by the US and the UK" and elevating sectarian cops instead. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr is a leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution, and he's integrated some of the SCIR's armed wing—the Badr organization—into police efforts. How much can we trust the Interior Ministry?

It emerged late last year that the interior ministry has been running secret detention centres. US troops discovered two prisons in which more than 800 men and boys, mostly Sunnis, were held in shocking conditions. Under the Iraqi constitution only the ministry of justice is allowed to run prisons.

Many Sunnis now say they would rather be detained by the Americans than the Iraqi police.

Iraqi democracy—a little less Iowa, a little more Five Points.