Saturday Morning News

BUSH WARS
Our "friends" are really our enemies ...
The enemy of my enemy is my...ENEMY?!?!?
In a rare battle between American and uniformed Iraqi forces, United States troops backed by fighter jets killed six Iraqi policemen and seven gunmen during a predawn raid in which they captured a rogue police lieutenant, the military said Friday. American commanders said that during the raid, against an Iraqi police position in eastern Baghdad, their forces had come under “heavy and accurate fire” from a nearby police checkpoint as well as surrounding rooftops and a church. They said the captured lieutenant was a “high ranking” leader of a cell they suspected of having links to the Quds Force, part of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The Iraqi police had no comment. The United States military has repeatedly accused the Quds Force of arming Iraqi militias with weapons and explosives. The Iranian government has denied those claims. The Iraqi police are widely thought to be infiltrated by the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias, as well as by Sunni insurgent groups, all of whom are accused of using their positions to plan and carry out widespread sectarian killings. (...does it seem wise to train these people to kill our own soldiers? Maybe we should go home and let them deal with each-other.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/14/world/middleeast/14iraq.html

And this, too, along the same lines, thanx to a link from Spencer Ackerman at TPMmuckraker...
According to a U.S. Army investigation, the Iraqi Police assisted a brazen January assault on U.S. troops in the southern city of Karbala -- an attack that a U.S. military spokesman tied to Iranian operatives earlier this month. USA Today obtained a copy of the Army's February 27 report. The report found that the Karbala policemen exploited "a level of trust" that U.S. commanders placed with them to provide security for a provincial headquarters where a contingent of soldiers were stationed. In the assault, one of the most sophisticated on U.S. troops to date, gunmen passed themselves off as part of a U.S. security team and entered the compound past police checkpoints, eventually killing five soldiers. (no, those weren't just soldiers, they were also someone's fathers, brothers, uncles, friends, husbands and lovers?) USA Today reports that in advance of the attack, Iraqi police abandoned their stations, as did Iraqi civilian employees of the compound's PX. The gunmen exhibited signs of knowing how U.S. forces would defend themselves under attack, and used that apparent knowledge to pin down and abduct soldiers and officers. (and these are our ALLIES?!?!?)
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070712/1a_lede12.art.htm