BAGHDAD (AP) - Days after the U.S. officially ended combat operations and touted Iraq’s ability to defend itself, American troops found themselves battling heavily armed militants assaulting an Iraqi military headquarters in the center of Baghdad on Sunday. The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens.

It was the first exchange of fire involving U.S. troops in Baghdad since the Aug. 31 deadline for formally ending the combat mission, and it showed that American troops remaining in the country are still being drawn into the fighting.

The attack also made plain the kind of lapses in security that have left Iraqis wary of the U.S. drawdown and distrustful of the ability of Iraqi forces now taking up ultimate responsibility for protecting the country.

Sunday’s hour-long assault was the second in as many weeks on the facility, the headquarters for the Iraqi Army’s 11th Division, pointing to the failure of Iraqi forces to plug even the most obvious holes in their security.

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Despite formal combat end, US joins Baghdad battle

When it comes to COMBAT, and having any success with it, I am pretty sure the French army is about the only one in the world that is more pathetic than the Iraqi army.

Iraq, it’s government, it’s police, it’s army, it’s civil infrastructure, the whole stinking mess, is shot through with corruption and infiltrated by those that WE refer to as insurgents.

Iraq, under Saddam, wasn’t much of a fighting force. They held Iran in check a few years ago simply because Iran has an army that is every bit as pathetic as the Iraqi army. That seems to be the rule of thumb for Arab militaries. They look like they are fighting like hell as long as they fight one another, but let a major military step in, or a dedicated insurgency, and they look like a version of the Keystone Cops.

The U.S. military has been training the Iraqi army for over 8 years now. Our training is NOT lacking. The Iraqis are a pathetic, rag-tag bunch and basically suck at organized tactics and have a serious issue with authority and taking orders.

The American troops who joined the fight and provided cover fire for Iraqi soldiers pursuing the attackers were based at the compound to train Iraqi forces, said U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Eric Bloom. Iraqi forces also requested help from U.S. helicopters, drones and explosives experts, he said. No American troops were hurt, Bloom said.

The best part of this entire story is written in the last few words of the above paragraph, ‘No American troops were hurt.’

Those are the words that every father, mother, wife, child, brother, sister, ALL family members love to hear. We are, for the most part, tired of our sons and daughters fighting, and dying, and being maimed, physically and mentally, for a government that can’t, and never will stand and defend itself, nor survive without our assistance.

Two weeks earlier, an al-Qaida-linked suicide bomber waded into a crowd of hundreds of army recruits outside the building and detonated a blast that killed 61 people. That was the deadliest act of violence in Baghdad in months.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Sunday’s attack.

Well gee, I don’t know. Maybe this will come back to bite me but I’m going out on a limb here and make a guess. I have a feeling that al-Qaida will claim the attack. That’s a bit of serious Intel analysis folks. At least as accurate as the media, and quite likely some so-called military Intel guys too.

An old *inside joke*. Two words that don’t go together: Military Intelligence. Just sayin’…

Baghdad has been on high alert since President Barack Obama declared the official end to U.S. combat operations on Wednesday, setting up more checkpoints, intensifying searches of people and vehicles and handing out more guns and bullets to troops guarding the capital.

The number of U.S. troops has fallen from a high of 170,000 to just under 50,000 this August; all U.S. troops must be out of Iraq by 2012.

Here’s the thing that truly worries me; Iraq is a long ways from being pacified. What happens if all of a sudden it gets really HOT again and the feces hits the wind oscillation device?

Insurgents have intensified their strikes on Iraqi police and soldiers to mark the change in the U.S. mission.

Iraq’s political instability now appears to be threatening the country’s security. Six months after an inconclusive election, Iraq still has no new government. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, is struggling to keep his job after his political coalition came in a close second to a Sunni-backed alliance in the March 7 vote.

Anyone that has read this blog for very long knows, I have NEVER believed Iraq was a place we needed to go, or should have gone. I have seen nothing in any report, any blog, any news story or any comment thread that has changed my mind in any way.

And before anyone goes off on a rant about me being anti war and not knowing what I’m talking about, I seem remember that House and Senate investigations concluded that Saddam had no WMDs, was NOT a part of 9-11 and that in all fact and actuality, we didn’t need to go to Iraq.

That was back in the days when we still had a GOP controlled House and Senate too.

Personally, I don’t give a damn what happens to Iraq and every Iraqi in the whole nation. If the entire place was over-run and a Saddam clone came back, I wouldn’t give a DAMN, except for the fact that we lost so many of our men and women in a fight, that in the grand scheme of things, will never amount to a hill of beans.

And lets not forget to mention the BILLIONS of U.S. tax dollars wasted in the process.

Here is just one more example of the U.S. government thinking that the hearts and minds thing is the way to win a war. If ya can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em off… Or not…

Plan to Woo Taliban Foot Soldiers Stalls

KABUL, Afghanistan — A $250 million program to lure low-level Taliban fighters away from the insurgency has stalled, with Afghans bickering over who should run it, and international donors slow to put up the money they had promised.

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Plan to Woo Taliban Foot Soldiers Stalls

Because we sure don’t want to make the same mistakes in Afghanistan now do we?