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  On Baghdad Patrol, a Vigilant Eye on Iraqi Police
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ContributorArmyDem 
Last EditedArmyDem  May 15, 2006 01:06am
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CategoryNews
MediaNewspaper - Washington Post
News DateMonday, May 15, 2006 07:05:00 AM UTC0:0
DescriptionU.S.-Trained Allies Are Often Suspects

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 15, 2006; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- Second Lt. Will Shields started night patrol for his 2nd Platoon Delta Company with the Baghdad basics: a reminder to speed up instead of slow down if a bomb hits the convoy, and a heads-up on where to stash any victims of killings, sectarian and otherwise.

"We find any dead bodies, we've got three or four body bags," the 23-year-old Shields said. "Hopefully, that'll be enough."

The young troops in his platoon briefly grumbled good-naturedly about whose Humvee always gets stuck hauling the corpses they find of equally young Iraqi men -- stiffened, blood-streaked and open-mouthed. Pretty much every day, U.S. and Iraqi troops are picking up apparent victims of Sunni-Shiite violence on the streets of Baghdad.

Since Feb. 22, when the bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra pushed sectarian tensions in Iraq to a new plateau, the U.S. Army units have quietly moved back into some neighborhoods that U.S. commanders had just turned over, with fanfare, to Iraqi security forces. Iraqi leaders asked for the return of the American troops into parts of central Baghdad in March, fearing that efforts to build a stable government would fall apart if they were unable to rein in the Shiite-Sunni killings, said Col. Jeffrey Snow, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division.
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