Iraqi Soldier Killed Two U.S. Soldiers

"Two U.S. soldiers who died last month in Iraq were apparently shot to death by an Iraqi soldier during a combined U.S. and Iraqi Army operation, the U.S. military said."

Two things came to mind when I read this headline.

1: I watched the documentary Gunner Palace two or three years ago. Throughout the film you became familiar with the soldiers as well as their Iraqi informants. The informants were the soldiers friends and knew each other quite well. They even gave each other affectionate nicknames. By the end of the movie two of the three informants turned out to be giving information to insurgents and deliberately leading US troops into ambushes.

2: Back in 2006 I picked up Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now. A well written and detailed account of US expenditures, pre-war Iraq, US impact, methods of withdrawing, how to stabalize the Iraqi government, and US post-war involvement. McGovern and Polk gave a dangerous warning: if the US invests its time, energy, and hope into the Iraqi Army rather than giving support to a future multinational peacekeeping force, militias, and police forces post US Iraq will be controlled by the only centralized, stable, and powerful force in the country - the Iraqi Military.

"Once American troops are withdrawn, the Iraqi public is unlikely to continue supporting insurgents, so the level of combat is almost certain to fall. This has been the experience in every comparable guerella war. But as the insurgency loses its national justification, new danger will confront Iraq: "warlordism" (as happened in Afghanistan) and other forms of large-scale crime. This breakdown of public order can best be addressed by a combination of a national police force, subject to central government control, and neighborhood, village, and tribal home guards."
...
"We suggest the the package should include provision of $1 billion to help the Iraqi government create, train, and equip such a force. This is roughly the cost of four days of the American occupation."
...
"It is not in the interest of Iraq to encourage the growth and heavy armament of a reconstituted Iraqi army...previous Iraqi armies have frequently acted against civil governments and Iraqi citizens. Iraqi armies have been a source not of defense but of disruption. Thus, until balancing civic institutions have time and oppurtunity to grow, the creation of an army is not in Iraq's interest. America cannot prevent the reconstitution of an Iraqi army, but it should not, as it is currently doing, encourage it at an estimated cost of $2.2 billion. Where possible, it should encourage the transfer of the soldiers it has already recruited to a national police force or to a national reconstruction corps..."

We need to be weary of who is joining up and who is recieving the armaments we hand out.

I'm not suggesting that the current Iraqi military is in a coordinated plot to attack America soldiers. Just a warning about the Iraqi military itself. While this lone guman may not have any ties to insurgents or terrorists - who knows it could have been an accident - we must be weary about what a coordinated and independent Iraqi military force will be capable of in the near future.

Will they repeat the mistakes of past Iraqi generations or will they act as a more benelovent force? Let's hope they act more like the Venezualen and Turkish armies than their own past.