OK end of lesson.
So what else have you been instructed to spread? I hope we build up the Iraqi Air Force to be one of the most dominant in the whole ME even if it means leaving instructors (retired US pilots) to train and fly missions. Let’s see the Iranian air farce (not misspelled) deal with that. They can try and get the mothballed f-14′s in the air, or they can keep shelling out millions upon millions for russian jets with down graded avionics. Iran was getting their ass handed to them by the joke that was the Iraqi military, could you imagine the slaughter Iran would be walking into if they went up against an Iraqi army trained and maybe led by US advisors? Artillery field day is one thing that pops in my head.

The Supreme Council is of course also the main proxy for the US in Iraq and somehow in the Senate testimony it was forgotten that its large Badr militia was established in Iran and is actually the only Iraqi opposition group to have fought on the Iranian side against Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. Moreover, the Badr militia was a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that is so demonized today, and Badr dominates the ministry of interior, if not most of Iraq at the higher echelons.
If militias are the main problem in Iraq, then the U.S. policy of creating new Sunni militias and empowering them to rule walled off fiefdoms does not bode well for the weak Iraqi government, especially when these Sunni militias view the Iraqi government as their main enemy. These Sunni militias, called “Awakening groups,” Concerned Local Citizens, Iraqi Security Volunteers, Critical Infrastructure Security Guards and Sons of Iraq are composed of former resistance fighters who collaborated with al Qaeda to fight Shiites and the Americans but put their fight against the Americans on hold so as to concentrate on fighting the Shiites in the next round of the civil war. Iraq’s Shiites are not thrilled that the Sunni militias who were slaughtering them are now resurgent. In August 2007 the Mahdi Army had declared a “freeze,” often mistranslated as a ceasefire. But the US military and the Maliki-Badr militia alliance continued to arrest and target the Sadrists and the Mahdi Army. If anything, they violated the ceasefire.

Salah al Ubaidi, Muqtada al Sadr’s spokesmen recently admitted that his movement was not getting along with Iran. Iran had helped them in the past but accounts of large Iranian arms shipments were “greatly exaggerated.” Muqtada refused to be a slave to Iran he said, implying that other Iraqi Shiite leaders were. In fact Mahdi Army members in Iraq have taken to blaming the actions of their more notorious members on Iran, adopting a position similar, if disingenuous, to that of Iraq’s Sunnis. Al Ubaidi also recently denounced Iran, accusing it of sharing control of Iraq with the Americans and criticizing Iran for not objecting to the long term security deal the Americans and Prime Minister Maliki are working on, to make the American military presence a permanent one. (N.Rosen)