[tw]

In Vietnam, major cities were relatively safe for servicemen. In Iraq, foreigners are at risk most everywhere outside of the Green Zones. Where else do we have problems? These news reports have long left me totally confused what we are doing. From the Washington Post of 2 May 2006:

Iraqis Begin Duty With Refusal
The graduation of nearly 1,000 new Iraqi army soldiers in restive Anbar province took a disorderly turn Sunday when dozens of the men declared that they would refuse to serve outside their home areas, according to U.S. and Iraqi military authorities.

The graduation ceremony at Camp Habbaniyah, a base about 45 miles west of Baghdad, had been going well. The 978 soldiers, most of them Sunni Muslims, had just finished nearly five weeks of military training and were parading before a review stand to the sounds of martial music. They took an oath of service while U.S. and Iraqi officials delivered speeches hailing the event as an important step toward the formation of a national army.

Then some soldiers started tearing their clothes off to demonstrate their rage.

The protest was triggered by an announcement that the new soldiers, all residents of Anbar province -- widely considered the heartland of Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgent movement -- would be required to serve outside their home towns and outside the province as well. ...

The incident appears to echo an event in April 2004 when a battalion of the Iraqi army was ordered to deploy to Fallujah to help U.S. Marines fighting there. The troops refused. During the following weeks, more than 15,000 other Iraqi soldiers and police officers deserted, ...

Army graduation ceremonies have often been troubled. In late 2003, according to Kalev Sepp, a retired Special Forces officer who has advised U.S. commanders in Iraq, U.S. trainers of one Iraqi unit so distrusted their students that they carried loaded pistols at a graduation ceremony in case of mutiny.