From reporter Steve Maynard:

Milton’s Veterans of Foreign Wars post plans to nearly double the size of its memorial wall to make room for more veterans’ names.

By the time the Veterans Memorial in Milton’s Triangle Park was dedicated on Memorial Day 2007, the wall already was so popular that all of the nearly 900 bricks had been purchased as tributes. Each is engraved with the name, rank and branch of service of a veteran.

VFW Post 11401 now plans to add another 450 bricks to the wall. The 30-foot-long wall would be extended 14 feet on each side and finished in time for a ceremony on Memorial Day, said Jack Chandler, post commander.

With no more room on the wall, 20 engraved bricks for service people have been placed in a walkway. The “friends of the memorial” walkway was intended for bricks purchased by non-military members. They have purchased nearly 100 bricks.

=> Read more!

The Iraqi national police have begun taking over responsibility from the military for counterinsurgency operations, said the former police chief of Lakewood who is now the director of the Baghdad Police College Transition Team.

But Army Col. Larry Saunders, who left his job as Lakewood’s top cop in February, warned the advances are fragile.

“Our success is fragile because when placed in situations of high risk, there's a tendency to go back to comfort zones and security and obeisance to whoever is going to be the big dog in the local area,” Saunders told a conference call of online journalists and bloggers this week. “And so there's real opportunity, I think, for this to retrograde and unravel very quickly.”

Iraq's police force, badly crippled during the invasion, now boasts about 450,000 members. The police transition team, based at Forward Operating Base Shield in Baghdad and located next to the police academy campus, includes 27 American police officers, seven Danish officers and five British officers. They work with a military staff of five.

Saunders said the national police is approaching a “third phase” of transition. Coalition troops restoring order during the surge – the American military increase of more than 20,000 combat troops in 2007 – completed the first phase. The second was when the Iraqi army began to replace coalition forces, something Saunders said has happened in most of the provinces.

=> Read more!