NOTES FROM A LOST WAR:

"...The convoy inched back to its base near Baghdad's airport a little more than an hour after heading out. The 2nd Platoon dropped off their wounded and grabbed a quick meal in the dining hall, frowning in annoyance at the fellow troops around them cheering a boxing match on TV. Then they went back out on patrol, a lightly concussed Philpot among them.

Hours later, his night of patrols and house searches nearing an end, Shields received a message from the base: Local police had been told of four corpses dumped in the streets and needed help picking them up.

The 2nd Platoon drove to the police station, where the Iraqis, most of them Shiite, were holed up behind watchtowers and blast walls in a heavily Sunni neighborhood. Inside, the policemen milled about in baggy T-shirts and untucked uniforms. They offered Shields bites of a falafel sandwich, and excuses.

They were tired, they were nervous, their cars were broken down, their friends had been killed lately and they were in mourning, the policemen told Shields, shaking their heads and expressing regrets over the impossibility of going out into the Sunni neighborhood at night to retrieve the bodies.

When Shields located the commander, Maj. Ahmed Mohammed, it gradually became clear that the police were scared and wanted the Americans to get the four corpses.

Emotion rippled across Shield’s face in a wave of clenching and unclenching muscles.

"You do realize," Shields said, unclamping his mouth and leaning forward over the slight Iraqi police major, "that this is your job?"

"How do you expect Americans to help you when you won't do anything?" Shields asked, before reaching a parking-lot accord that U.S. soldiers would escort a single pickup truck of police to fetch the bodies and come back.

“It Was At This Moment That The Men With Guns Chose To Strike”"
uruknet

H/T who else Iraq Today