US Army Captain: Iraqi soldiers are like a bunch of kids

[ECH1969]

An Iraqi soldier is running across the street, an automatic weapon in one hand, firing blindly down the alley towards the enemy, apparently unaware of his fellow soldiers in the line of fire. “Somebody slap that f---er,” yells U.S. Army Capt. Josh Brandon. The Iraqi, grinning, safely reaches Brandon on the far side of the square. The captain isn’t smiling.

About 45 minutes into what would turn into a two-and-a-half-hour firefight with suspected terrorists in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya, this is no time for the Iraqi troops to start playing cowboy. “A lot of their training comes from watching American movies,” he mutters.

Forty-five minutes, four enemy RPGs, two wounded Iraqi soldiers, and a handful of Brandon outbursts later, the mission is coming to a close. The Iraqi soldiers are making steady ground up the street, and have caught six suspected insurgents and killed four enemy combatants.

Most of the Iraqi soldiers are beaming with pride. But not U.S. Sgt. William Thomas Fraas. He points across the square to two Iraqi soldiers who are kicking a detainee in the rear as they lead him off towards their humvee. “I have to go over there and tell them to stop beating him up,” says Fraas. We’ve got to tell them what to do—they’re like a bunch of kids.” “That’s lucky,” says one American private. “The Iraqi Army usually kills them.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14591714/site/newsweek/page/4/

[donco6]

1. Great. Now we've trained a new Waffen SS

Who can say how long this will haunt us?

[Poll_Blind]

2. Oh merciful American soldiers, continue spreading Liberty.

  Ok, ok, I'm bitter. I'm glad that Captain Brandon intervened. Still, am I the only one to pick up more than a whiff of Imperialist bullshit in the title and angle of this piece?

  I remember similar thoughts when the "Iraqi looters" raided the Baghdad museum. All that anger turning on the Iraqis with the "They're nothing but a bunch of thieves" meme not-so-subtly tabled again and again on American media programs. Now...Later when it came out that the museum was robbed in a timing scheme coordinated with the first attacks and that the theivery of the most valuable pieces had been an inside job done by experts...well, that meme of Iraqi citizens being nothing but looters quieted down quite a bit.

  We're fucking up in Iraq, we're fucking up Iraq, and before the last helicopter lifts off from an embassy rooftop crowded with people hanging onto the skids for dear life our media will be reporting essentially how the noble white man came and tried to train the savages only to find they were really subhuman and not fit for our gifts of Democracy.

  I hate seeing a train-wreck coming, and it's already a train-wreck now but, hell, it's going to get so much worse...And we're going to collectively allow ourselves to skate for 10, 20 years before anyone in the mainstream starts the "Oh, we all knew we fucked up." talk.

PB

[arcane1]

3. shooting back at an invading army is NOT terrorism!

the word has lost all meaning, hasn't it?

[ECH1969]

4. huh?

[arcane1]

5. sorry, that wasn't directed at you

rather, to the writer of the article.

[ECH1969]

6. That is what I am saying

The writer of the article never used the word terrorists.

[arcane1]

7. 2nd paragraph, 1st sentence