Absolutely amazing. Even if this is 10% of what's actually happening out there, these troops are American citizens, and American soldiers. We must give them what they need -- and that's not thong underwear and Baskin Robbins ice cream. They need munitions, armor, and other support. That's the only way we're going to bring people home alive.

I don't support war in general, but I do understand the need for professional soldiers to have the equipment necessary to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. If they don't have it, they can't do it. God bless those men and women out there in the wastelands of Iraq -- it seems like He's the only one who will.

And for those who would lambaste my appearing naïvety, understand that I don't know anyone who's gone to this war. I am up to my eyeballs in friends and family who do not volunteer for active duty in any way. I assume (wrongly, it appears) that the government who sends troops to war also arms them properly, despite all evidence in Salon's pages to the contrary.

It appears we Americans need to sacrifice in time of war once again. What ever happened to that? Maybe we need to take up collections to purchase weapons and munitions for our troops, stop purchasing frivolous material goods, and put our money where our mouths are. Conservative and liberal alike can stand behind THAT idea.

Thank you very much for this article. I will admit, I'd never heard of these units either before this piece. Nevetheless it occurs to me that if more Americans knew about these MiTTs, they would be more supportive of their deployment, as opposed to the seemingly random snipe-hunts for insurgents that mainly kill ordinary Iraqis.

So I have to wonder: is the administration reluctant to truly support this program precisely because they want it to fail, because should it actually succeed the Neocons could no longer demonstrate how much we're needed there?

Last year I did some research in the New York times on the multiple reports of recruits being killed. In some cases, the same recruiting center has been bombed more than once. Here at home you can't carry shampoo or scissors on a plane, but over in Iraq we can't prevent continued mass casualties among Iraqi recruits:

"Agence France-Presse, citing an unidentified security official, said at least 30 people were killed and 41 hurt. . . . Initial reports indicate the suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest targeted the applicants, the military said. About 1,000 prospective candidates were waiting in line shortly before the blast, according to the statement." January 2006

"Earlier Saturday, a suicide bomber wrapped with explosives struck a special police recruiting center in Baghdad, killing at least 16 other people gathered outside the gate." - 7/2/05

"A man wearing a police uniform drove a red Toyota on Monday into a field crowded with policemen and recruits, detonating a bomb that killed about 15, wounded about 125 and caused mayhem in Erbil, a northern Kurdish town that until recently had been one of the most peaceful in Iraq." - 6/21/05

"A suicide bomber pretending to be a job seeker blew himself up Wednesday morning outside a police recruiting center in this Kurdish provincial capital, killing at least 60 Kurds, most of them prospective policemen, and wounding 150 others as insurgents pressed an effort to destabilize Iraq's infant democratic government." - 5/5/2005

" One suicide bomber struck just after noon at the front gate of an Iraqi Army recruiting station in the Baghdad neighborhood of Adamiya as a group of fresh recruits stood waiting nearby, Interior Ministry officials said. Two Iraqi soldiers and two recruits were killed, and 38 people were injured." - 4/20/05

"A suicide bomber steered a sedan full of explosives into a thick crowd of Iraqi police and army recruits here on Monday morning, killing at least 122, Iraqi officials said, in the deadliest single bombing since the American invasion nearly two years ago." - 3/1/05

"In the deadliest ambush of the insurgency, guerrillas dressed as policemen killed about 50 freshly trained Iraqi soldiers in remote eastern Iraq as the unarmed soldiers were heading home on leave Saturday evening, Iraqi officials said Sunday." - 10/25/04

"Seven Iraqi men applying for jobs with the Iraqi National Guard were ambushed and killed in western Baghdad on Saturday morning . . . " - 9/26/04

"In Mahmoudiya, a Sunni enclave south of Baghdad and a spot of regular ambushes against American troops and foreign travelers, Iraqi soldiers fired on a car that failed to stop as it sped toward a line of several dozen potential recruits at a civil defense base. The car then exploded, killing Mr. [Saddam Obeid] and his friend, a fellow civil defense soldier, Adel Tahar, 23." - 7/18/04

"A powerful suicide car bomb ripped into a throng of men waiting Thursday morning outside the army's main recruiting station in the heart of the capital, killing at least 35 Iraqis and wounding at least 138, health officials said. The men were lining up to enlist in the new Iraqi army." - 6/18/04

"The men killed Wednesday were standing outside the army recruiting station just after 7:30 a.m. when, police officials said, an explosives-packed Chevrolet Celebrity driven by a masked man careered into the crowd. Though the base is fortified with hundreds of sand-filled barriers, most of the recruits were outside the protected zone. At least 47 people were killed and 50 wounded, said an Iraqi police official, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Kadhum Ibrahim." - 2/12/04

"...two days ago, a bomb exploded in Ramadi, northwest of Baghdad, killing seven young Iraqi police recruits." - 7/8/03

If Morris' eyes were rudely opened by the plight of the MiTTs in Iraq - I'd recommend he also take a gander at the Embedded Training Teams (ETTs) over here in Afghanistan. They don't get shot/RPG'ed/mortared at like the MiTTs in Iraq, but they are woefully under-supported as well, and the motivation of the Afghans they are training is quite often, well...more than suspect. But thats just par for the course, like so many other things here in 'The Forgotten War.'

The following could quite easily be considered heresy, as I am an active military officer: I'm sickened and saddened by the thought of what we could have accomplished here with all the untold hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of personnel that we wasted, yes - wasted, in the black hole of Iraq; a war of aggression and choice, fought for the most venal, priggish and arrogant reasons.

A last comment for 'ecobox': I strongly disagree that Americans should have to start holding fund drives for equipment for troops in harms way. Thirty cents of EVERY tax dollar you and I pay goes to the Department of Defense. THIRTY PERCENT!! That's criminal given the myriad other problems this country faces.

Your heart is in the right place dear 'ecobox'.

DOD's isn't.