A Bad Sign In Iraq
Three U.S. soldiers killed today, two of them by Iraqi Army soldiers:
Two American soldiers were killed when one or two Iraqi soldiers opened fire on them at a military training base in northern Iraq, while a third soldier died in an attack to the south, according to the U.S. and Iraqi military.
The violence highlighted Iraq’s continued danger for American soldiers, with many Iraqi armed groups still eager to target U.S. forces ahead of their scheduled withdrawal at the end of the year.
The American soldiers were training with their Iraqi counterparts at the base of Ghazalani in Nineveh province when they were attacked, according to Iraqi and American officers. A third U.S. soldier was wounded. It was unclear if there were one or two Iraqi gunmen.
(…)
The killings raised American military deaths in Iraq since March 2003, when U.S.-led forces invaded the country, to 4,435, according to the independent website icasualties.org. Of those, 3,515 were killed by hostile fire.
If this is a sign that the Iraqi Army is turning against the US, then we’d better get the heck out of there as fast as possible:
Very true. But it’s also a large “if.” Especially if there were only one gunman (was he affiliated with anyone, or did he just hate his trainers?).
We don’t know enough right now to know what to think. Maybe this had something to do with Sadr’s return last week, and his speech vowing to fight the Americans and throw them out. How many former JAM members are now in the Iraqi Army? We don’t know.