The United States Finds Few Non-Iraqis Among Insurgents

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070724/24surge.htm

The United States Finds Few Non-Iraqis Among Insurgents
By Anna Mulrine
Posted 7/24/07

As President Bush continues to stress al Qaeda as the chief threat to Iraq's stability—a reprised effort to establish a link between al Qaeda in Iraq and the 9/11 attackers—U.S. military forces on the ground in Iraq are fighting a complex war in regions with vast networks of overlapping loyalties—and few foreign fighters. Most members of al Qaeda in Iraq, say commanders on the ground, are local Iraqi outcasts.

"I can count them {foreign fighters} as a total I have engaged, dead or alive, in the 10 months I've been here on one hand," says Col. David Sutherland, the U.S. commander of coalition forces in the hotly contested area of Diyala province, an insurgent stronghold region some 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. There, Sutherland says, those involved in al Qaeda are largely dispossessed locals, not jihadists who have come from elsewhere. "The recruiting program is {that} al Qaeda may send five or eight individuals into a village. They recruit from those who have no power base, no place in society," including, he adds, former male prostitutes and the mentally ill.

[MADem]

1. Recommended!!!! And look at the SOURCE, too!!! USN and WR isn't exactly a liberal mag

This bit is amusing:

The result, says Sutherland, is that "sometimes the violence that somebody may think is al Qaeda or sectarian may be tribe on tribe." The bottom line, he says, is that "not everything is al Qaeda. Not everything is sectarian, not everything is tribal. And some of it just might be criminal."

[TwilightGardener]

2. Wow--important truth that needs to be recognized.

[blogslut]

3. Insurgents

What a damned lie of a term. The correct term would be RESISTANCE.

[butterfly77]

4. These are the people they came to liberate...

Now they are free, so what is bush complaining about?

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

5. Isn't this still saying that Al Qaeda is predominant in Iraq?

Colonel Sutherland may state that he can count the foreign Al Qaeda fighters on one hand, but he's implying that the locals are all joining Al Qaeda. What happened to all the Baathists? What happened to the thousands of soldiers who disappeared into the woodwork when the U.S. invaded and who became guerrilla fighters? What happened to all of the Shiite militia? Did those all join Al Qaeda, too? I read somewhere that the Al Qaeda presence, including foreign fighters and any locally recruited fighters is somewhere below 5% of the insurgency. What I'm wondering is whether this is another attempt to try to attribute all of the resistence in Iraq to Al Qaeda and, since we know there are few foreign fighters in Iraq, to their recruitment of locals, including the mentally ill, male prostitutes, outcasts, etc.

In other words, it's maintaining that the "normal" Iraqis love us. It's just Al Qaeda screwing this up.

[Karenina]

6. Sutherland can count them on one hand...

and they were ALL SAUDIS! :evilgrin: