No quagmire: U.S. forces training their own attackers

Today's Washington Post [In Iraqi Town, Trainees Are Also Suspects] "There's two kinds of Iraqis here, the ones who help us and the ones who shoot us, and there's an awful lot of 'em doing both," said Hoover, 26, of Newark, Ohio. "Is it frustrating? Yes, it's frustrating. But we can't just stop working with them." ~ ...in a town where the local population is hostile to the American presence in Iraq, U.S. soldiers have developed a deep distrust of their Iraqi counterparts following a slew of incidents that suggest the troops they are training are cooperating with their enemies. Earlier this month, a U.S. sniper team caught 14 policemen placing roadside bombs in the nearby town of Riyadh. More than 60 other police officers are named on a watch list of suspected insurgent collaborators, according to U.S. military policemen who train them. And last week a raging fire erupted from a sabotaged oil pipeline 50 feet from a police checkpoint, covering the sky with a blanket of black smoke. ~ "In some places they hide the fact that they don't like you. They don't hide it here," ~ "It's like the Chicago police department in the 1920s, so infested with mobsters that even the good ones are corrupt because they don't want to get killed," said Staff Sgt. Ryan Horton, 28, a military policeman from Dallas who works closely with the Iraqi police. "They all live in the community with the terrorists, and so do their families. They are very, very intimidated." ~ "I've seen them laughing when we come back in with a vehicle destroyed by a bomb," he said. "I've seen them stand 10 feet away and do nothing but watch when we are in the middle of a firefight." ~ "They want to be able to claim they are not associated with us," ~ "Many of you told me the attacks are the work of foreigners," said Gray, 48, of Herscher, Ill. "Gentlemen, my conclusion is that the problem is not foreigners, but a problem within your tribes. And if the problem is within your tribes, the solution lies with all of you in this room." ~

Gray and Hutson said they had considered bringing to Hawijah an Iraqi army battalion from Kirkuk, where security forces are composed primarily of Kurds. The move, they acknowledge, would be intensely provocative for a population already furious about Kurds' intention to bring more territory under the control of their semiautonomous northern region.

"It would be a disaster," said Sekran, the Iraqi army battalion executive officer. "The population would refuse this with violence, and it would cause a civil war."

Other U.S. officers said a better path is withdrawing all outside troops and leaving the city to the local security forces. "Sometimes I think we just give them something to shoot at. When we leave, all that might just go away," Tapalman said. "But then they'd be in charge."