US Papers Fri: 'We Are in the Middle of It'

[rodeodance]

http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/3874/US_Papers_Fri_We_Are_in_the_Middle_of_It

US Papers Fri: 'We Are in the Middle of It'
Refugees in Jordan; High security for Shi'ite pilgrims; US seeks UN help on Iraq

By CHRIS ALLBRITTON Posted 7 hr. 26 min. ago
Not a lot of bang-bang news from Iraq today, but it allows for some meaty enterprise reporting from both the Washington Post and The New York Times.

Sudarsan Raghavan of the Post leads off with a well-played front-page story on the difficulties in finding and fighting the right enemies in Iraq, focusing on the Triangle of Death south of Baghdad. The men of the 3rd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment are smack-dab in the middle of Iraq's civil war down there. "We are in the middle of it," said Col. Michael Garrett, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) of the 25th Infantry Division, indicating the center of his area of operations, which is the size of Rhode Island. "I'm not fighting one sect or the other. I'm fighting both. And not only am I fighting both, but at certain points I have to put my forces in between the Sunni and Shia groups to protect the populace." Complicating matters is the number of players and the rivalries. Shi'ite-on-Shi'ite, Sunni-on-Sunni, Shi'ite-on-Sunni, everybody on the Americans. "We are in the land of the blood feuds," said Maj. Rick Williams, a liaison to tribes in the area. "It's very difficult to tell a tribal fight from a sectarian fight because interests are pretty mixed. You can't just put up a fence." Raghavan tackles the competing and overlapping conflicts in the region on a town-by-town basis: Iskandariya is split by Shi'ite-Sunni tensions; Musayyib is torn by intra-Shi'ite rivalries; swampy Khdir is home to Sunni foes, and its terrain makes it the least hospitable to U.S. forces. Frustration among the troops is high.

"We haven't done anything here. We'll go for 24 hours and we'll see nothing," said Sgt. Josh Claeson, a radio operator, as he waited with nearly 200 soldiers under the glow of an orange moon for helicopters to Khidr. "Our basic mission here is to drive around and get blown up."

At the cemetery the next morning, after the discovery of the weapons cache, a soldier picked up one of the guns and raised it triumphantly. "Hey, we are heroes," he declared, posing for a camera.

[Junkdrawer]

1. "Our basic mission here is to drive around and get blown up."

Yep. And help fuel the civil war.

Divide and Conquer.