Iraqi forces detain 1,000 in al Qaeda push

[maddezmom]

Source: Reuters

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi forces have detained more than 1,000 suspects in an offensive aimed at crushing al Qaeda in northern Iraq, the military commander of the operation said on Saturday.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki returned to Baghdad on Saturday after spending several days in the city of Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province to supervise the crackdown.

Many gunmen from Sunni Islamist al Qaeda have regrouped in Nineveh after being pushed out of other areas. The U.S. military says Mosul is al Qaeda's last major urban stronghold in Iraq.

Lieutenant-General Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, head of the Iraqi-led offensive that began a week ago, said 1,068 suspects had been detained so far.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080517/wl_nm/iraq_dc;_

[BayouBengal07]

1. Why is it always al-qaeda?

I thought al-qaeda was a shadowy terrorist network that sent nineteen men with boxcutters on 9/11- not a thousand-plus strong militia. Anything to convince us were "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" I guess.

[ronnie624]

5. I think it is because the term

has been successfully planted in the collective consciousness of the American people. It now serves as the 'face' of an organized enemy on which the fickle attention spans of Americans can be focused when the need arises. It helps with the continued manufacture of support for U.S. aggressions in the Middle East and elsewhere.

There really is no such thing as al-Qaeda in a tangible sense. It was originally a database of names and bios of fighters who went to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet invasion. It is a shortened version of the Arabic term, 'Q eidat il-Maaloomaat' which literally means database. The term has little meaning now. It is now used as a label for a nebulous group of terrorists, most of whom do not even know each other, and are certainly not organized as a cohesive network.

<http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=15254>

[BayouBengal07]

7. Tell me about it

We watched The Power of Nightmares (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares) in my Fundamentalism and Religious Nationalism class back in undergrad; the thesis of the documentary is that Al-Qaeda doesn't exist tangibly.

In the early 1990s there was a split between the followers of Ayman Al-Zawahiri (back when he was leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad), who wanted to take the post-Afghanistan jihad to the apostate regimes like Egypt, and those that wanted to take it to the larger enemy- the US. There was some franchising of the Al-Qaeda "brand", which has recently gained popularity (see AQI and Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, formerly the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat), but it's debatable as to whether that was simply a part on those groups to capitalize on the "it" factor of Al-Q.

At least I think that was the case. I haven't studied Islamic Fundamentalism since last year. It's kinda been shoved out of my brain since I entered law school.

[ronnie624]

8. Thanks for the info. n/t

[BayouBengal07]

9. Well...

Don't take that for gold. I pulled an all-nighter last night and I just pulled that info out of my head on the fly. Plus I was never a very good student. But if you're interested there's a lot of reading online (obviously) that can set the record straight.

[xchrom]

2. and how many of those will be 'al qaeda?

my guess is that all kinds of iraqis participate in bushco's unleashed chaos for all kinds of reasons.

[ohio2007]

3. Guess will will know by the # of times they have been released from prison

They were supposed to sign a waiver promising never to hurt Iraqi's ;)

...Defence ministry spokesman Major General Mohammed al-Askari said there had been no clashes during the operation and that 530 of those arrested were wanted by the authorities.

"There are no clashes or killings," Askari said, adding that the crackdown codenamed "Mother of Two Springs" was continuing in Mosul, described by US commanders as Al-Qaeda's last urban bastion in Iraq.

....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080517/wl_mideast_afp/iraqunrestusmosulqaeda


They'll let many of these guys go but the shrinking wiggle room is pushing them toward Turkey,Syria and Iran but the ones caught with a mortar shell or RPG......
dunno, back to the big house for them.... then eventually released back into society.....

[xchrom]

6. that's pretty terrific description

of what i was thinking.

so many iraqis from all walks have been involved in all of this -- they're not going to keep anyone in jail.

and 'al qaeda' in iraq? -- pffft -- who the fuck knows -- al qaeda is whatever anybody wants it to be at any given time.

[ohio2007]

4. " Nancy Pelosi--landed in Baghdad on Saturday for talks with U.S. and Iraqi officials"

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a key Democrat critic of President George W. Bush's war policy, landed in Baghdad on Saturday for talks with U.S. and Iraqi officials, the U.S. embassy said.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080517/wl_nm/iraq_dc

It should be interesting to see if she gets many MSM quotes next week .........

hmmm...

[jwirr]

10. All their political enemies regardless of what organizations they

belong to. This is an old game all dictators play.