With Friends Like This ...

[PornoDoggy]

I realize this is not from Fox News, but any cocksucker who confuses "Stars and Stripes" with the biased liberal media needs to be seriously bitch-slapped.

June 28, 2005

By Kevin Dougherty

( Editor's Note: This is the fifth and last installment in a series on training Iraqi security forces. Part I , Part II , Part III and Part IV appeared June 24-27).

HAWIJAH, Iraq — A uniformed Iraqi with all the proper credentials walks up to an armored Humvee in Hawijah, levels his AK-47 at the window and fires off a clip, seriously injuring a U.S. servicemember.

The evening before, in Sulaymaniyah, U.S. forces learn of an imminent attack on their forward operating base. Nearly a dozen Iraqi soldiers, including several on gate duty that night, are subsequently arrested as co-conspirators.

“They were going to kill us in our sleep,” one soldier later said.

Around that same time in May, Iraqi soldiers are ambushed on a bridge spanning a railroad yard in Beiji. At least three soldiers in the unit, call them sleepers or spies, are believed to have played a role in the scheme.

“The leaks are there,” said Capt. Hussin Ali Sulyman, commander of the Iraqi army unit in Beiji.

Figuring out which Iraqi security forces are trustworthy and which are not is one of the greatest challenges American troops face in Iraq. The specific number of attacks on friendly forces involving infiltrators is unknown, but it easily exceeds what American forces experienced in places such as Somalia, Bosnia or Afghanistan.

A senior coalition official associated with training Iraqi security forces said Iraqis do their own vetting of prospective candidates, whether it be a police officer, border guard or soldier. When you're dealing with thousands of individuals, some bad guys are going to slip through the cracks.

“It's going to happen,” the official said. “You just have to try to protect against it as much as possible.”

That quandary leads many U.S. troops to err on the side of caution when dealing with Iraqi forces. But in doing so, they send their allies mixed signals. It's as if they are saying, they're with the Iraqis and want them to succeed, but no one is above suspicion.

It's a thinking enemy,” said Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, spokesman for the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq. “Fortunately, we are a thinking army. But you can't read a guy's mind.”

balance of the article here