On Our Side
A fascinating piece in the LA Weekly by Swedish journalist Diana Ljungaeus and her American husband, Frank Megna, about an Iraqi on our side whom U.S. officials pulled funding and support from, blowing his cover, and then refused to help flee Iraq:

Among all the Iraqis who aided American forces, few proved to be more valuable and fewer still risked as much as Faris Al-Baghdadi (his name has been changed by L.A. Weekly). From 1988 to 1998 he served in Saddam's Air Force. Eventually, he was arrested, charged with disloyalty (trumped-up charges, he says), and tortured by Saddam's military. Exiled to Iran in 1999, he returned to his native country after the 2003 American invasion. He worked as a translator and quickly impressed his American employers, who promoted him to lead a secret "special-ops squad," a clandestine pro-American Special Forces team composed solely of Iraqis who sometimes masqueraded as insurgents or criminals.

But Al-Baghdadi suddenly lost his cover in 2005, when the U.S. pulled his funding and support. Two enemy assassination squads tried to kill Al-Baghdadi, military officials tell the Weekly, yet U.S. officials failed to cut through the red tape to help him flee Iraq, and refused him and his family the refuge of a permanent home in America.

It was his U.S. Marine comrades, acting entirely "on a volunteer basis," who aided him, through a harrowing and dangerous escape from Iraq. He was left to his own devices by the U.S. Department of State, and his family ultimately found a safe haven not in the U.S. but in Sweden.

Still loyal to America -- or, more accurately, loyal to what he now calls "the idea of America" -- Al-Baghdadi kept offering his help, until the Marines invited him to train U.S. troops in California. Through the persistence of one USMC major, U.S. authorities realized Al-Baghdadi's worth and allowed the "asset" -- but not his family -- to come here. Today, Al-Baghdadi, with his adopted tribe of warriors near San Diego, is Semper Fi and gung ho. But during off-hours, often spent on weekends with friends in Los Angeles, he rages with disillusion and loss.

U.S. officials confirm Al-Baghdadi's story and agree that he represents much of what is wrong with America's handling of "foreign national assets" from Iraq. His leading U.S. Army Special Forces mentor, who asked not to be named for security reasons, says, "Al-Baghdadi always got the mission done for us by going anywhere, regardless of how dangerous it was for him to get the information we needed." Al-Baghdadi narrowly missed being killed by two exploding IEDs and "joked about how working for me was dangerous to his health," the mentor notes.

Al-Baghdadi' story suggests that official bungling and indifference damaged U.S. efforts in Iraq and now threaten to break a man who did everything, including killing countrymen, because he believed in American-style democracy.