A top-ranking Iraqi soldier killed

This news out of Iraq is no small thing.

One of the highest-ranking generals in Iraq's new, U.S.-trained army was shot dead in Baghdad on Monday, the U.S. military and Iraqi police said.

Major General Mubdar Hatim al-Dulaimi, commander of all Iraqi army forces in the capital, was killed by a sniper, police sources said. he was shot as he drove through western Baghdad.

As the commander of the 6th Division, among the first and biggest of Iraq's new army divisions formed by U.S. forces as part of their plans for eventual withdrawal, Dulaimi was among the most prominent officers in Iraq's security forces.
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The U.S. military said in a statement: "Mubdar had been visiting his soldiers in Kadimiyah and was returning to his headquarters when his convoy came under small arms fire attack."

That report was from Monday. This one was from Tuesday.

The Iraqi army is investigating how a gunman managed to kill a senior Iraqi general in an attack that has fueled concern about the new, U.S.-trained Iraq military's cohesion in the face of brewing sectarian conflict.

"It is a very strange incident and raises many questions," an official in the Defense Ministry press service said on Tuesday after the commander of all Iraqi troops in Baghdad died from a bullet to the head while in a patrol convoy on Monday.

Another Iraqi general told Reuters it was an assassination that needed inside information and proved the army, recruited by U.S. officers over the past two years, had been infiltrated by factional militia groups ready to turn on fellow soldiers.

"The outsiders have hands on the inside," the general said.

The former U.S. commander in Baghdad said the killing of Major General Mubdar Hatim al-Dulaimi, a Sunni Muslim who commanded the 10,000-strong 6th Division in Baghdad, could be part of a move to establish Shi'ite control of the capital.

The division, among the best equipped and strongest of Iraq's new forces, has been on the frontline of preventing a civil war after sectarian bloodshed erupted two weeks ago over the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in the Sunni city of Samarra.

A troubling aspect to this is the list of possible perpetrators is not exactly short.

It could be Sunni insurgents, targeting a general of the armed forces responsible for quelling the insurgency and bringing stability to Iraq. I am told Sunnis have been known to bring in a Serb or Chechen for dirty jobs.

It could be Shiite militias. Perhaps Iran is way back behind it somewhere. Perhaps Russia.

Arabs are not known as world-class marksmen. If this was a sniper, one can wonder who trained this sniper. And why.

This incident speaks to the instability in Iraq, and how a low-grade civil war has been simmering for some time. It has not erupted into large-scale civil war, I think for several reasons. Chief among them the Sunnis know they would be road kill.

Whoever did this, for a top Iraqi general to be assassinated is not a positive development, to say the least. CentCom released this statement.

On behalf of Multi-National Force-Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. extends his most sincere condolences over the shooting death of Maj. Gen. Mubdar Hatim Hazya Al-Duleimi, commander of the Iraqi Army’s 6th Division. Maj. Gen. Mubdar was gunned down in a heinous act of terrorism today while performing his important military duties for Iraq.

This tragic incident will neither impede the 6th Iraqi Army Division from continuing its mission of securing Baghdad nor derail the formation of the Government of Iraq.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family, tribe, and the Iraqi Army during this tragic loss.