Headline: Six of 1,000 speak Arabic fluently at U.S. embassy in Iraq.

WASHINGTON — After more than three years in their country, the U.S. military still can’t understand Iraqis.

The Iraq Study Group said the lack of Arabic speakers has hurt U.S. intelligence collection and analysis. The bipartisan panel said the U.S. military and government rely too much on non-U.S. translators, who fail to provide context.

Sheesh.  It took a congressional study group to figure out that there is a problem when only 0.6% of the U.S. embassy employees speak the local language.  I could have told them that.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 7:22 am and is filed under Government, Iraq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.