Iraqi troops reject Falluja duty
A senior US military officer in Iraq has said that a battalion of the new Iraqi army refused to support US forces in the town of Falluja.
A report in the Washington Post newspaper said the 620-man battalion refused to go to Falluja after being shot at in a Shia area of Baghdad.
It was the first time US commanders had sought to involve post-war Iraqi forces in major combat operations.
The troops were quoted as saying they had not signed up to fight Iraqis.
Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, who heads the US-led ground forces, said the incident had uncovered significant challenges within the new force, being trained ahead of the June handover of sovereignty.
Analysts say the incident has exposed serious weaknesses, casting further doubt on US plans to transfer security matters to Iraqis.
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I think that the final critiscims is unfair and the US commanders screening and training the new Iraqi army ought to be given credit for their work.
For the first time in Iraq's modern history, it has an army that is unwilling to turn its guns on the general populace - and people are calling that a serious weakness? If the Iraqi army had behaved like this in 1993, a hundred thousand people would still be alive today...
For once, there is *clear* evidence of some positive gains in ideology that the US has implemented, and it gets derided 