Soldiers fear that they are 'sleeping with the enemy'

[floda]

Adrian Blomfield discovers deep mistrust between American troops and Iraqi soldiers they are training



If the US marines and Iraqi national guardsmen living at the Karmah military barracks near Fallujah talk at all, they speak through the bars of a small window.

The Americans peer out from the ammunition room, filled with weapons confiscated from suspected insurgents, trading banter with the Iraqis who stand on tiptoes in a huddle outside, their eyes squinting against the glare of the late summer sun.


Though there is laughter, things are not as they should be at Karmah barracks. "This is camp poison," whispers a marine. "Watch your back."

The sinister atmosphere at Karmah barracks is not difficult to understand. The marines are convinced that many, perhaps most, of the 140 members of the Iraqi National Guard (ING) they share the camp with are double agents working on behalf of the insurgents holding Fallujah.

more..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/10/18/wirq218.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/10/18/ixnewstop.html

[acmavm]

1. Sounds like the military training of Iraqi troops is going well. Nobody

trusts anyone else. Over half (if not almost all) don't show up on a given day, and there's reports of abuse by US troops.

Sounds like another splendid operation over there.

<sarcasm off?

[goddess40]

2. They have to be afraid of their own

According to one of the founders of an organization that is made up of soliders back from serving in Iraq that are now against the war if you make any noise about thinking the war is wrong they take your weapon away from you, until you change your mind. Can you imagine what it would be like being in a war zone and having no weapon to defend yourself.

[bemildred]

3. Gotta prevent "fragging". Sick, is it not? nt

[Chico Man]

4. Ouch

Bush doesn't care, all he cares about is getting a statistic of "trained INGs" that he can use when campaigning (brainwashing).

If this is the attitude now, I beleive it will only get worse..

How is Kerry going to speed up the training of INGs? What a hornets nest.... and it's just what Bush wanted.

[brhodes]

5. Sounds just like Danang, Pleiku, Son Hut, Khe Sahn and

Saigon in 1967

[Jackpine Radical]

7. Anh Khe '67 was the one that sprang to my mind.

But yeah--just like the ARVN.

[MadHound]

8. I agree friend,

Just one more in a long line of similarities between Vietnam and Iraq. And for those out there wondering how Iraq is going to end, well, look at how Vietnam turned out.

[Dogmudgeon]

12. Wasn't that called "Vietnamization"?

Sounds like what we now have is "Iraqization".

--bkl

[diamond14]

15. PHOTOS...America leaves Vietnam, after "liberating" them...

Iraq/Afganistan will be the same or worse....




April 14, 1975


the United States Embassy wall...those who helped the Americans fled for their lives...


April 29, 1975


U.S Marines guarding American Embassy personnel, as they evacuate....TWO Marines were KILLED, April 29, 1975




the "lucky" ones arrive on a U.S. Navy ship....


North Vietnamese troops run across the tarmac of Tan Son Nhat air base in Saigon as smoke billows behind abandoned U.S. Air Force transport planes on April 30, 1975.

So there you have it....America...totally defeated by a Third World Country, with no air force or navy and only minimal weapons....

[Dogmudgeon]

21. Humiliating Defeat With Honor

As Tricky Dick might have said.

--bkl

[NewYorkerfromMass]

6. This is why you need a just cause (Gov. Bush) to wage a war

the war is illegitimate and so we have no moral foundation.
Mistrust is a natural result.

[gratuitous]

9. Golly, how could anyone have predicted this?

Well, anyone with the mentality of a four-year-old. As it is, this was startlingly obvious to anyone who cared to think about it for more than a couple of minutes. Let's imagine the U.S. invaded by a foreign power, our government deposed and rounded up for unspecified crimes, and now the occupiers are going to train the citizenry to fight in the newly ruptured society.

First things first: Get the invader out of the homeland. I'll settle my differences with the Republicans or the Neocons later, but before we do anything else, Kang and Kodos have to go.

And none of the corrupt Bush administration geniouses* figured this for a possibility? But we need to put this bunch in office for four more years, so they can fix the incredible fuck-up they've created, according to the talking chuckleheads on the news shows. Delusional, the lot of them.

*Misspelling is intentional.

[aquart]

10. We told them so. In detail. Over and over.

But they had certainty and the voice of god in their hearts. How could it all have gone so horribly wrong.

[gratuitous]

13. Well, yeah, in the reality-based world

But in the corrupt Bush administration cocoon, external realities don't intrude.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. Everything the anti-war activists predicted has come true

:-(

Some administration official (I forget which one) called us "a bunch of Cassandras," after the prophet in Homer's Iliad.

Well,what they forgot is that Cassandra was under a curse: nobody ever believed her prophecies, even though she was 100% accurate.

[kwyjibo]

11. God, that is scary

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

14. It would probably help if this hadn't happened:

http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_ID=4858

[Jacobin]

16. IraqNam.....Iraqization going 'well' I see

gee, who coulda thunk this would happen.

/sarcasm

[VegasWolf]

17. "We will be welcomed by flowers thrown at our feet!", GWB n/t

New Information Shows Bush Indecisive, Paranoid, Delusional

[TheKingfish]

18. This obsession with 'Training'

Training is not the question with Iraqi National Guard and Police. Loyalty is the issue.

Who trained all of these insurgents? They seem to be doing just fine

[bemildred]

19. It's all they have.

Gotta have some light at the end of that tunnel.
Especially before an election.

[JUS]

20. good god that sounds like a hell-hole

[saigon68]

23. GUESS WHAT BOYS----THEY DON'T WANT YOU AS OCCUPIERS

The Iraqi army would be viewed as turn coats by the population,

Quislings and traitors.


The same as our "SOUTH VIETNAMESE ALLIES"

WHAT A JOKE