I don't have any major qualms about the latest PBS series on Iraq and the GWOT although I haven't seen all of the episodes so I have to take Gary Kamiya's criticism of it to heart.  I am already on record as saying Richard Perle should not continue to have a platform to spew lies to the American people so giving him his own segment was definitely a bad call on PBS's part.  I did however catch a little of the "Gangs of Iraq" episode and was pretty taken aback at some of the footage they had of American-Iraqi joint operations and the infiltration of the Iraqi military, security forces and police by sectarian (read Shiite) militias.  One segment pretty much did it for me and that was a joint US-Iraqi raid on a Mahdi army weapons cache.  What did I learn?

1. The American troops don't trust the Iraqis troops:  American advisors to the local police routinely confiscate cell phones so that the police can't inform the local militias they're coming.
2. The American's have good reason not to trust the Iraqis:  After the raid reveals a small weapons cache, we get the camera recording a small group of Iraqis and see the translation of their conversation in which an Iraqi army officer boasts that this is nothing, the Americans haven't found "the big stuff"and that he knows where a major Mahdi army weapons cache is because his own imam is hiding it.  Needless to say they watch the Americans crow over the small cache and never say a thing about the other.
3. The American troops really don't give a shit about the Iraqi troops they're working with:  At one point the Iraqi troops find a car bomb.  The American captain in charge orders the Iraqi officer to send one of his men over to cut the wires on the bomb.  Meanwhile the Americans move back and when the cameraman follows the Iraqi soldier he's told to move back because he doesn't want to be there if it explodes.  Its clear the Iraqi infantry man is clueless and naturally balks at doing anything at which point the American captain finally calls in American explosive ordinance disposal troops to blow it up.  Why the EOD guys weren't called in the first place is never answered but you got the sense that the Americans almost expected the Iraqi soldier to be blown up and didn't really care.