U.S. troops were conducting a live-fire training exercise with Iraqi forces near Taji, a city about 12 miles north of Baghdad, when the three men walked onto the artillery range, a military spokesman said. An 11-year-old boy was also injured in the incident.  He was evacuated to a U.S. military hospital where he is in stable condition.

The incident comes as the U.S. military shifts its primary role in Iraq from combat to training Iraqi security forces with exercises like these.

While the sectarian violence that created massive rifts in Iraq has died down, the battle between northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region and its Arab-led government in Baghdad is being seen as one of the greatest threats to the country’s fragile stability by politicians and military leaders in Washington.

These tensions have not gone unnoticed by al Qaeda insurgents.  According to U.S. defense officials, they have sought to exploit the tensions to retain a strong hold even as their influence wanes in other region’s in Iraq.  These officials point to a string of deadly bombings as evidence that the group was capable of reconstituting its “combat power.”

Reuters reports:

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said Washington was “heartened” last week when Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki met the Kurdish region’s president, Masoud Barzani, after more than a year of deadlock.

“But we are very nervous, continue to be, about the overall Arab-Kurd tensions,” Morrell told a news conference.

U.S. troops, preparing to withdraw from Iraq by 2012, have intervened many times to defuse the row, and Washington has pushed for a settlement before its forces go home.

The new censorship policy will require Internet cafes to register with the government and publishers to censor content in new books.  The laws are a continuation of Prime Minister al-Maliki’s attempts to censor sexual material coming into the country beginning in May.

Government officials say these uncensored materials are corrupting the minds of young Iraqis and encouraging sectarian violence. Iraq’s cultural minister Mufid Al-Jazairi told the New York Times, “Our constitution respects freedom of thought and freedom of expression, but that should come with respect for society as a whole, and for moral behavior. It is not easy to balance security and democracy. It is like being a tightrope walker.”

Col. Timothy Reese (courtesy of Antiwar.com)

A senior military adviser in Iraq, issued an internal memo urging the US to significantly speed up its pullout from Iraq.  In this memo leaked to the New York Times, Col. Timothy Reese pushes for the U.S. to simply “declare victory” and have announce that all troops will be out of the nation by August 2010.

Bluntly, Col. Reese says keeping US troops in Iraq “isn’t yielding benefits commensurate with the effort and is now generating its own opposition.” He asserts that America has overstayed it’s welcome, saying, “guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”

With the opinion that the U.S. is no longer making enough progress toward improving Iraq to justify the effort, Reese writes:

The general lack of progress in essential services and good governance is now so broad that it ought to be clear that we no longer are moving the Iraqis “forward.” Below is an outline of the information on which I base this assessment:

1. The ineffectiveness and corruption of GOI Ministries is the stuff of legend.

2. The anti-corruption drive is little more than a campaign tool for Maliki

3. The GOI is failing to take rational steps to improve its electrical infrastructure and to improve their oil exploration, production and exports.

4. There is no progress towards resolving the Kirkuk situation.

5. Sunni Reconciliation is at best at a standstill and probably going backwards.

6. Sons of Iraq (SOI) or Sahwa transition to ISF and GOI civil service is not happening, and SOI monthly paydays continue to fall further behind.

7. The Kurdish situation continues to fester.

8. Political violence and intimidation is rampant in the civilian community as well as military and legal institutions.

9. The Vice President received a rather cool reception this past weekend and was publicly told that the internal affairs of Iraq are none of the US’s business.

Reese’s thoughts regarding withdrawal are markedly similar to the pullout strategy touted by Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign.  On the campaign trail Obama promised he would take all troops out of Iraq by May 2010. His advisors quickly revised this policy to removing all combat troops from the nation. This was further revised to note that the troops remaining would still be conducting combat missions, but wouldn’t be officially called combat troops.

The Obama administration maintains that the pullout remains “on schedule,” but there is little doubt the Reese memo will raise further questions about whether that schedule is the right one.

Violence interrupted the celebrations of National Sovereignty Day (photo courtesy of Iraq Solidarity Campaign)

One month ago today, celebrations filled the streets of Baghdad as Iraqis marked “National Sovereignty Day,” commemorating the official withdrawal of American troops from Iraqi cities.  But in Kirkuk, just 150 miles north of Baghdad, the cheers and high spirits were replaced with screams and panic when a car bomb exploded in a crowded market, killing at least 34 people.

This incident caused me to take a step back and ask, ‘Is Iraq ready to stand on its own two feet?’

Over the last six years American troops, advisers and diplomats have been working to establish a stable Iraq, combating violence, training Iraqi soldiers and police, and planting the seeds of democracy for the first time in Iraq’s history.  What more can the United States do to help this war torn nation?

Perhaps the answer is to stop helping.

Raed Jarrar was just an average 25 year old in Baghdad, studying to become an architect when the U.S. invasion began in 2003.  He saw American bombs exploding just beyond his Baghdad neighborhood.  Now Jarrar is in Washington, D.C. working as the Iraqi consultant for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization, and is fighting to bring peace and healing to his homeland.

Despite recent upticks in violence, Jarrar sees American troop withdrawal as the beginning of stabilization.  However, he is not naïve about the state of readiness in Iraq.

“From my point of view and the point of view of the majority of Iraqis, the current Iraqi armed forces and political forces are not ready to run the country,” Jarrar said. “But the U.S. forces must withdraw because the Iraqi forces are not strong enough, because they are not legitimate enough.”

While it may seem like twisted logic, Jarrar firmly believes the only way to stabilize the situation in Iraq is for the U.S. to leave and allow the Iraqi government and security forces to gain legitimacy on their own so that Iraqis can fix their problems for themselves.

And Jarrar is not alone in this thinking.

University of Louisville Political Science Professor Rodger Payne says allowing Iraq’s fledgling democracy to establish its legitimacy with its people is critical to its long-term success.

Payne said, “A new democracy, like Iraq, that’s not fully democratic, those are among the most vulnerable government types in the world.”

As such, it is important that the United States take a step back politically, as well as militarily, for a democratic Iraq to become legitimate enough to survive domestically and internationally.

“I think the worst thing that can happen from the U.S. point of view is for Iraq to be perceived as essentially a client state for the U.S., with a government that’s basically approved by the U.S., and that would essentially let the U.S. do whatever it wants,” Payne said, warning that this scenario could turn into a reality if the U.S. didn’t scale back its interference in Iraq.

And for many Iraqis, Jarrar pointed out, the current relationship between Iraq and America is hauntingly familiar.

Throughout its history Baghdad has been invaded and occupied by the Greeks, Persians, Mongols, British and seemingly everyone in between.  John Warren, an associate at the University of York’s Post-war Reconstruction and Development Unit, draws attention to Iraq’s history of foreign occupation in his article “War and the cultural heritage of Iraq.”

And this history of invasion has had a significant impact on the Iraqi people, Jarrar said.

“Resisting foreign occupations and rejecting foreign occupations is a part of the Iraqi culture and a part of the Iraqi collective memory,” Jarrar said. As a result, he said, “The vast majority of Iraqis have a huge sensitivity against any type of foreign intervention, whether it’s a foreign occupation or intervention into Iraq’s politics.”

Rend Al-Rahim, a former Iraqi ambassador to the United States and the executive director of the Iraq Foundation, a non-profit organization promoting democracy and human rights in Iraq, blames American intervention in Iraqi politics for a large part of the current instability.

She says the sectarian-ethnic paradigm that is crippling Iraq’s parliament, pinning one group against another and making it impossible to reach across party lines to achieve national goals, is rooted in poor decisions by Americans back in 2003 and 2004.

“The parliamentary system that was set up in Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority was really based on the wrong assumption that Iraq is neatly divided into Shies, Sunnis and Kurds,” she explained. “This was entirely wrong and has brought enormous problems for Iraq, and part of the bloodshed that occurred over the years has its roots in that dreadful model.”

By creating parties driven by sect and ethnic lines, Rahim explained, it becomes impossible to reach out to new and different voters to promote pan-ethnic and pan-sect agendas.

In fact, many scholars, like Daniel Byman, an assistant professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University, believe Saddam Hussein consolidated his power by exacerbating tensions between diverse sectarian, ethnic and tribal communities.

Therefore, to achieve democratic harmony Iraq’s current political system must evolve.

To right these mistakes and achieve a sustainable democracy, Rahim says Americans must shift away from meddling directly in Iraqi politics and join the ranks of the international community, helping from the outside.

She described meaningful change toward stability coming from “not only American pressure, but international pressure on Iraq, saying, ‘look, you really need to work on relationships between the political entities and the social groups, between sectarian and ethnic groups.’”

Looking at the bigger picture, she continued, saying, “This is something that is required by the international community of Iraq because a broken Iraq is not of interest to Iraqis nor the international community.”

Professor Payne agrees with Rahim that stepping back from the role of the hovering mother and returning to the ranks of a peer in the international community is one way America can actually help strengthen Iraq now as American troops withdraw.

He explained that keeping Iraq at arms length can be beneficial for Iraq and America, saying, “Part of the problem the U.S. has been facing for the last five years or so is, because much of the world did see this as basically a U.S. war and there was a reluctance for others to jump in and want to contribute finances, security forces, just about anything.”

By disengaging politically and militarily Payne predicts the international community would move away from thinking of Iraq as America’s responsibility, and would be more willing to provide the recovering nation with financial, humanitarian and political assistance.

But Iraq is in no way in the clear.  While academics and politicians in the United States try to predict the trajectory of Iraq’s future, the looming reality consists of continuing pockets of violence and instability.

Describing a recent trip back to Iraq, Rahim said, “The Iraqi forces have improved dramatically,” tentatively adding, “but not enough for my taste.”

She said she felt the training and discipline of Iraqi police and military forces was entirely uneven and worried whether these forces have achieved the necessary national cohesion to act in the interest of state and not in the interest of a particular political party, sect or ethnicity.

Rahim’s concerns are similar to those voiced by Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in an interview with the Washington Post.  He said, “Only if broad-based sectarian violence reignites in Iraq are we likely to have a major problem,” continuing on to say, “admittedly, that could still happen.”

Should a civil war break out, as it very nearly did in 2006, there is little the diminishing numbers of American forces could do if Iraqi national forces defect to join in.

However, there are still plenty of American troops to deal with any violence and strife that could arise in the next few weeks and months.  According to the think tank Foreign Policy in Focus, 134,000 American soldiers are still in Iraq, only slightly less than the number of troops positioned there in 2003.

Despite this fact, Payne emphasized the importance of the United States sticking to the agreed upon terms of the Status of Forces Agreement.

He said, “If the U.S. gets out on terms agreed with Iraq and Iraq is genuinely independent and sovereign, if then sectarian violence increases, or in the worst case civil war [breaks out] or a coup or some unforeseen catastrophe takes place, not only would the U.S. have an interest in stepping in, but lots of other countries would arguably have an interest.”

Despite the turmoil in his home country, Jarrar is looking forward to continued progress toward peace and democracy, independent of American involvement.  Ready to returning home to help rebuild, he described the drawdown in troops saying, “It’s not the last step in stabilizing Iraq, but it is the first step in stabilizing Iraq.”

Wikimedia Commons

The American government is now paying for skydiving lessons. And paint ball.

In what could be seen as reverse logic, the U.S. Army is hoping an adrenaline rush will help vets calm down.

With a wave of soldiers returning home from Iraq with mental health disorders and this problem has the military searching for new ways to supplement and redefine its counseling and self-awareness evaluation programs. Beyond your typical therapy, the Army is hoping thrilling terror of war home through safe outlets through a new program called “Warrior Adventure Quest.”

Warrior Adventure Quest sends soldiers just home from war on outings of paintball, mountain biking, scuba diving, sky diving, whitewater rafting, alpine skiing, snowboarding and rock climbing in hopes of overcoming the “Rambo Syndrome”– the emotional need for some of the tension and fear-tinged excitement of combat.

Army officials say they’ve learned that soldiers who are used to life in a war zone suddenly find life at home to be moving at a glacial pace and hope this program will reduce the anxiety of this shift.

Read the AP’s story: Army Using Extreme Sports to Help War Veterans

This move reflects a shift in strategy, similar to what we saw in Iraq, where soldiers are now concentrating on protecting the Afghan people rather than finding and wiping out insurgents. Now the military will only release general estimates. “We send the wrong message if all we talk about is the number of insurgents killed. It doesn’t demonstrate anything about whether we have made progress,” Navy Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, who decided on the new policy, told the Los Angeles Times.

Smith has asked commanders to issue fewer news releases and to focus on improvements in security where international forces are operating, according to the Times.

Throughout the Vietnam War, the American military was notorious for inflating Vietcong bodycounts in an attempt to boost perceptions of success in that conflict.

But the Obama administration must also worry about perceptions of success.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said this month that U.S.-led forces must show progress by next summer to avoid the public perception that the conflict has become unwinnable.

This policy change in the Pentagon comes as the Obama administration is adjusting the U.S. role in Afghanistan. A troop “surge” is expected to boost the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 68,000 by year’s end.

Read the Los Angeles Times article: U.S. stops giving militant death tolls in Afghanistan

With a new reading for the U.S.-Iraqi security agreement (the same document which set a deadline for the American troop withdrawal from Iraqi cities) the Iraqi government has sharply restricted the movement and activities of American forces. This control has rubbed many U.S. commanders the wrong way, who have become increasingly concerned with the safety of their men and women.

The Washington Post reports:

In a curt missive issued by the Baghdad Operations Command on July 2 — the day after Iraqis celebrated the withdrawal of U.S. troops to bases outside city centers — Iraq’s top commanders told their U.S. counterparts to “stop all joint patrols” in Baghdad. It said U.S. resupply convoys could travel only at night and ordered the Americans to “notify us immediately of any violations of the agreement.”

In an e-mail obtained by the Post, Maj. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, commander of the Baghdad division, wrote “Maybe something was ‘lost in translation.” He continued, writing, “We are not going to hide our support role in the city. I’m sorry the Iraqi politicians lied/dissembled/spun, but we are not invisible nor should we be.” He indicated that U.S. troops intend to continue to engage in combat operations, even in urban areas, in order to avert or respond to threats, with or without help from the Iraqis.

“This is a broad right and it demands that we patrol, raid and secure routes as necessary to keep our forces safe,” he wrote. “We’ll do that, preferably partnered.”

These new guidelines are a reflection of rising tensions between the American and Iraqi governments. Iraqi leaders are using this agreement as an opportunity to show their countrymen that the are in charge and that Iraq’s dependence on the U.S. is decreasing.

Jessica Harbin/Medill

On Sunday, Quinn held a town hall meeting at Tallil Air Base, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, which has a large concentration of members of the Illinois National Guard.

Describing his trip, Quinn said he “received a lot of sympathy” from troops who had followed his rise to governorship after the shambles of former Governor Rod Blagojevich earlier this year. He also indicted that troops were very curious about the educational opportunities for them after they return home.

Compared to his visit in 2004, Quinn said he was impressed with the increased security and stabilization of the country overall. Known for attending the funerals of service members killed in combat, Quinn said the major changes that have taken place in Iraq since his previous visit prove that their lives weren’t given in vain.

“I was in awe, really, of the men and women here,” Quinn told reporters via conference call from Kuwait. “I think it’s important that the governor of the fifth-largest state in the Union personally thank special Illinoisans. They are the best of the best, and I said at every gathering I was at that ‘you are the pride of our nation.’ ”

Quinn was joined by the governors of Missouri, Minnesota, Nevada and Texas.