No exit strategy

摘要

Colonel robert brown, of the American army, was almost killed in northern Iraqi city of Mosul last year-but not by insurgents. His error was to have put Iraqi police commandos in the rear of his patrol. When the patrol was ambushed, the commandos returned fire into the backs of their American allies. "If you're working with commandos," the colonel advised, "be sure you know where they are." Yet the commandos, who currently number around 4,000 retrained fighters of the old regime, are probably the best of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), along with a similar number in Iraq's revamped regular army. Wild they may be, but at least they seem willing to fight. The same is not true of the regular police, who have almost always run away as the insurgency billowed across the country over the past year.