A Conversation With Sa'ad

Sa'ad is an Iraqi Shia born in Baghdad and a refugee who fled to America within the past decade. He still has family in Iraq and has asked that I not use his last name. He recently spent fourteen months in Iraq as a private contractor acting as an interpreter for a SEAL team and, later, an SF team in Anbar and Diyala. He was present in Anbar and Diyala before and then throughout the surge. I have been fortunate to have him as a houseguest for the past few days. Here are some of his observations.

1. In Iraq, prior to 2003, there was not a major Shia / Sunni divide at the local level. There was intermarriage, and indeed, several of his siblings have married Sunnis. The religious schism we see being played out in Iraq today has several parts. One is the foreign fighters - al Qaeda and the like - who have swept into Iraq and whose raison d'etre is religion. Another is the former Baathist officers who are secular but are now using religion as a cover for their activities. Third, and the least successful, has been agitation by Iran within Iraq. Al Qaeda and the ex-Baathists are spreading much of their violence by offering bounties to the Sunni. For example, return to al Qaeda with the head of a Shia, and you get $3,000.

2. Suicide bombers are inevitably steeped in Wahhabism and often drugged before being sent out on their missions.

3. He has witnessed incredible bravery of the Iraqis. He saw an Iraqi policeman in Anbar who observed an overly dressed man approaching a group of women. Suspecting a suicide bomber, he ordered him to stop, and when the bomber did not, he tried to shoot him in the head (anywhere else and the bomber will still retain muscle control long enough to detonate). His gun jammed, and the policeman tossed down his weapon, charged the bomber, and wrestled him a few yards away. When the two fell to the ground, the bomber detonated his vest, killing them both.

4. Sadr is not popular among the Shia, almost all of whom look to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani for guidance. I argued that we should have killed Sadr when we had him cornered in 2004 at the Mosque of the Golden Dome. Sa'ad thinks that the Americans did the right thing by not entering the mosque and that Sadr irreprably harmed his cause by turning the mosque into a war zone. He believe Sadr is poorly spoken, not too smart, and that he does not enjoy wide support among Iraqis today, though he is concerned that Sadr will attempt to replace the aging Ali Sistani when he passes away.

5. Sa'ad has a bit of a love hate relationship with America. He is upset that in 1991, America did not finish the job of removing Saddam. According to him, had the US done then what it did in 2003, the U.S. would have had a much easier time of it. In the interim, Saddam slaughted countless Shia and Kurds who rose up against him in the aftermath of the '91 war. He is bitter about that. He is happy that we finally did invade in 2003, but he looks at that as a gift horse. He says he does not know why America invaded his native country then, but he is just happy they did so.

More to follow later on his perceptions of the current Iraqi government.

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Interesting Posts From Around The Web - 13 March 2008

Interesting posts from around the web, all below the fold:

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Art: Sisyphus, Vecellio Tiziano, 1549

A Rose By Any Other Name: A fallen hero.

Dinah Lord: Kidnapped Iraqi Archbishop found dead.

The Transatlantic Conservative: John McCain and the Pledge of Allegiance. Its quite a moving story.

Classical Values: "Wright is raw. Obama is smooth. Different sales pitch. Same product." Watch the video.

Ironic Surrealism: Much more on Obama’s racist Reverend Wright.

Q&O: Hillary gets fact checked with predictable results.

The New Editor: Per Instapundit, Hillary plays the Dork Card.

Winds of Change: Evaluating Geraldine Ferarro’s comments on Obama.

Redstate: Quid pro crook - Obama, earmarks, and his wife’s salary.

This Ain’t Hell: Code Pink suffers mission failure . . . and yes, that dress makes you look fat.

Red Alerts: The good and bad news about the economy from an interview with legendary economist Anna Schwartz, who co-authored the revolutionary "Monetary History of the United States" with Milton Friedman.

A Western Heart: Our economic woes are wholly self-inflicted. This is not the normal business cycle.

Vast Rightwing Conspiracy: Obama pulls a Kerry on the issue of mail in voting.

The Irish Elk: "Ho No," it’s a good Spitzer round-up.

An Englishman’s Castle: The UK has granted an asylum to a rouge’s gallery of people who have no business in the West whatsoever. Now, in the case of a young gay man from Iran who faces execution for his homosexuality, where there should be no question that asylum is appropriate, the UK is inexplicably dragging its feet.

Fulham Reactionary: Indeed, as to illegal immigrants, it seems but for the odd Iranian homosexual, the police aren’t even really trying anymore.

Seraphic Secret: Israel releases its annual intel report and Iran puts a bounty on Irsraeli leaders.

Shrinkwrapped: Has Israel lost the will to live?

The Shield of Achilles: I thought this was answered several millenia ago. Should incestuous marriages be declared illegal?

Liberty Corner: Taking on the arguments against teaching intelligent design.

Sigmund, Carl & Alfred: PC Manspeak. Heh.

The Dhiveistan Report: "[T]he penis of the Elected never softens, the erection is eternal. The sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious . . ." Surprisingly, this is not out of Eliot Spitzer’s journal. It is more insidious than that.

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Iraq & Afghani Obaminations

Obama seems to have a problem with recognizing reality, whether about Iraq or Afghanistan. And McCain weighs in.






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This was Obama answering questions from Tim Russert last night during the Ohio debate:

MR. RUSSERT: Let me talk about the future -- let me talk the future about Iraq, . . . . You both have pledged the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. You both have said you'd keep a residual force there to protect our embassy, to seek out al Qaeda, to neutralize Iran. . . .

SEN. OBAMA: . . . Now, I think that we can be in a partnership with Iraq to ensure the stability and the safety of the region, to ensure the safety of Iraqis and to meet our national security interests.

But in order to do that, we have to send a clear signal to the Iraqi government that we are not going to be there permanently, which is why I have said that as soon as I take office, I will call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we will initiate a phased withdrawal, we will be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. We will give ample time for them to stand up, to negotiate the kinds of agreements that will arrive at the political accommodations that are needed. We will provide them continued support. But it is important for us not to be held hostage by the Iraqi government in a policy that has not made us more safe, that's distracting us from Afghanistan, and is costing us dearly, not only and most importantly in the lost lives of our troops, but also the amount of money that we are spending that is unsustainable and will prevent us from engaging in the kinds of investments in America that will make us more competitive and more safe. . . .

MR. RUSSERT: I want to ask both of you this question, then. If we -- if this scenario plays out and the Americans get out in total and al Qaeda resurges and Iraq goes to hell, do you hold the right, in your mind as American president, to re-invade, to go back into Iraq to stabilize it?

SEN. CLINTON: You know, Tim, you ask a lot of hypotheticals. And I believe that what's --

MR. RUSSERT: But this is reality.

SEN. CLINTON: . . . . But I also have heard Senator Obama refer continually to Afghanistan, and he references being on the Foreign Relations Committee. He chairs the Subcommittee on Europe. It has jurisdiction over NATO. NATO is critical to our mission in Afghanistan. He's held not one substantive hearing to do oversight, to figure out what we can do to actually have a stronger presence with NATO in Afghanistan.

You have to look at the entire situation to try to figure out how we can stabilize Afghanistan and begin to put more in there to try to get some kind of success out of it, and you have to work with the Iraqi government so that they take responsibility for their own future. . . .

SEN. OBAMA: Well, first of all, I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007. So it is true that we haven't had oversight hearings on Afghanistan.

I have been very clear in talking to the American people about what I would do with respect to Afghanistan.

I think we have to have more troops there to bolster the NATO effort. I think we have to show that we are not maintaining permanent bases in Iraq because Secretary Gates, our current Defense secretary, indicated that we are getting resistance from our allies to put more troops into Afghanistan because they continue to believe that we made a blunder in Iraq and I think even this administration acknowledges now that they are hampered now in doing what we need to do in Afghanistan in part because of what's happened in Iraq.

Now, I always reserve the right for the president -- as commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad. So that is true, I think, not just in Iraq, but that's true in other places. That's part of my argument with respect to Pakistan. . . .

There are several points raised in this exchange, but first, the McCain response and Obama's reply:

McCain . . . suggested his anti-war colleague’s response was either naive or uninformed.

“When you examine that statement, it’s pretty remarkable,” McCain told a crowd in Tyler, Texas.

“I have some news. Al Qaeda is in Iraq. It’s called ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq,”‘ McCain said, drawing laughter at Obama’s expense.

The dig triggered a back-and-forth that continued long-distance through much of the day.

Obama quickly answered back, telling a crowd at Ohio State University in Columbus, “I do know that Al Qaeda is in Iraq.”

“McCain thought that he could make a clever point by saying ‘Well let me give you some news Barack, Al Qaeda is in Iraq,’ like I wasn’t reading the papers,” he said. “But I have some news for John McCain, and that is that there was no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq.” . . .

This really encapsulates Obama's argument against prosecution of the war in Iraq. Whether al Qaeda was present in Iraq prior to the downfall of Hussein is at least arguable. What is not arguable is that Iraq made it the central front in their war on the West by 2005. I find it fascinating that Obama, whose campaign asks America to not dwell on the past but look to the future, is stuck in 2003 when it comes to Iraq. I've talked before about the sheer sophistry of his line of argument and the catastrophic costs of leaving Iraq before it is a stable state. See here. McCain needs to move the debate onto this latter issue.

And Obama's testimony raises two other points. As the chairman of Foreign Policy Subcommittee on Europe, Obama has much to answer for as regards NATO. And Clinton was absolutely on target to hammer him on this, though she should have said much more.

Afghanistan is in large measure a mess because NATO is an absolute travesty. The European nations other than Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands have refused to provide combat soldiers. They have been content to let our soldiers and the soldiers of a few other nations do all of the fighting. Obama's assertion that this failure on the part of the European nations is because they think we made a mistake going into Iraq is insane. It doesn't take much reading of Der Spiegel's articles on Germany's debate on Afghanistan, to come away with the knowlege that Obama's Iraq argument is pure bull. Further, for Obama, as the European Subcommittee Chairman, to try and claim that his argument mimics that of Sec. of Defense Gates - whom you can read here - is ridiculous.

One, what the hell has Obama been doing while NATO is falling apart? This is not a new issue - its been clearly known since before Obama took over the chairmanship of his subcommittee in 2007. The problem with NATO is not Iraq, and its pretty clear that Obama has been no part of an attempt at a solution. This is a critical issue that the next commander in chief must address - yet Obama has apparently avoided it like the plague.

And are we seeing a very troubling pattern in Obama's veracity. There is certainly a huge gap between Obama's soaring rhetoric and the reality of his record. But of late, when he starts to get into specifics about Iraq and Afghanistan, his points equally lack any veracity. One can perhaps excuse Obama's bombast that the Anbar Awakening only came about because of the Democrat's victory in 2006. But the most recent examples above and Obama's recent ludicrous claims regarding a an anonymous captain in Afghanistan are very troubling indeed. Either someone was lying to Obama about the Captain and Obama bought it, or Obama has no problems with making things up as he goes along his divine path. The former suggests naïveté, the latter malignancy. In consideration of all of the above, I am on the knife's edge of no longer giving him the benefit of the doubt as to which it might be.

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Krauthammer, Iraq, & And The Moving Target

Charles Krauthammer ponders the same question I raised last week. Given the very real gains in security Iraq and the Iraqi government's passage of several important laws for reconciliation, how can the partisan left still attempt to justify surrender and withdraw? Some on the left have in fact given their answers.

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I posted the other day on how surreal and transparent the partisans on the left were becoming in attempting to justify defeat in Iraq in light of clear progress towards peace and reconciliation. Charles Krauthammer weighs in today on the same issue and, not surprisingly - Krauthammer leads with the report of CSIS's Anthony Cordesman:

"No one can spend some 10 days visiting the battlefields in Iraq without seeing major progress in every area. . . . If the U.S. provides sustained support to the Iraqi government -- in security, governance, and development -- there is now a very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state."

-- Anthony Cordesman,

"The Situation in Iraq: A Briefing From the Battlefield," Feb. 13, 2008

This from a man who was a severe critic of the postwar occupation of Iraq and who, as author Peter Wehner points out, is no wide-eyed optimist. In fact, in May 2006 Cordesman had written that "no one can argue that the prospects for stability in Iraq are good." Now, however, there is simply no denying the remarkable improvements in Iraq since the surge began a year ago.

Indeed, although Krauthammer does not point it out, Cordesman's prior criticisms were sufficiently harsh and pessimistic that the New York Times had them permanently linked at the bottom of their opinion page. To continue with Krauthammer:

Unless you're a Democrat. As Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) put it, "Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq." Their Senate leader, Harry Reid, declares the war already lost. Their presidential candidates (eight of them at the time) unanimously oppose the surge. Then the evidence begins trickling in.

. . . After agonizing years of searching for the right strategy and the right general, we are winning. How do Democrats react? From Nancy Pelosi to Barack Obama, the talking point is the same: Sure, there is military progress. We could have predicted that. (They in fact had predicted the opposite, but no matter.) But it's all pointless unless you get national reconciliation.

"National" is a way to ignore what is taking place at the local and provincial level, such as Shiite cleric Ammar al-Hakim, scion of the family that dominates the largest Shiite party in Iraq, traveling last October to Anbar in an unprecedented gesture of reconciliation with the Sunni sheiks.

Doesn't count, you see. Democrats demand nothing less than federal-level reconciliation, and it has to be expressed in actual legislation.

The objection was not only highly legalistic but also politically convenient: Very few (including me) thought this would be possible under the Maliki government. Then last week, indeed on the day Cordesman published his report, it happened. Mirabile dictu, the Iraqi parliament approved three very significant pieces of legislation.

First, a provincial powers law that turns Iraq into arguably the most federal state in the entire Arab world. The provinces get not only power but also elections by Oct. 1. U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker has long been calling this the most crucial step to political stability. It will allow, for example, the pro-American Anbar sheiks to become the legitimate rulers of their province, exercise regional autonomy and forge official relations with the Shiite-dominated central government.

Second, parliament passed a partial amnesty for prisoners, 80 percent of whom are Sunni. Finally, it approved a $48 billion national budget that allocates government revenue -- about 85 percent of which is from oil -- to the provinces. Kurdistan, for example, gets one-sixth.

What will the Democrats say now? . . .

Despite all the progress, military and political, the Democrats remain unwavering in their commitment to withdrawal on an artificial timetable that inherently jeopardizes our "very real chance that Iraq will emerge as a secure and stable state."

Why? Imagine the transformative effects in the region, and indeed in the entire Muslim world, of achieving a secure and stable Iraq, friendly to the United States and victorious over al-Qaeda. Are the Democrats so intent on denying George Bush retroactive vindication for a war they insist is his that they would deny their own country a now-achievable victory?

Read the entire article.

So far, four on the left have responded to the changes in Iraq, with Nancy Pelosi being the most completely ridiculous:

. . . [Y]ou can't get anymore surreal than Nancy Pelosi and her response to this de-Baathification law. She dismissed it during a CNN interview the other day on the grounds that it had occurred . . .

. . .

(wait for it)

. . ."

too late."

Yes. That's right. Reconciliation does not count in her alternate reality because it did not occur in time. The House Democrats apparently passed a double secret time limit. If only Maliki and Bush had known. Amazingly, Wolf Blitzer let her get away with that response without challenge - or at least no challenge I could hear over my laughter, but I digress.

Read the article here.

And Michael Kinsley has responded by not merely moving the goal posts, but moving them outside the bounds of any logic. According to Mr. Kinsley, neither the security gains nor the political progress matter in assessing whether the surge has succeeded or in judging how to proceed in Iraq. His incredibly sophmoric argument is that the surge can be labled a failure solely on the basis of how many troops we have in Iraq at the moment. But even he is not calling for withdraw now. Which sets him apart from the LA Times.

The Los Angeles Times has responded to the good news from Iraq. Captian's Quarters covers their bizarre justification for still legislating surrender, which they never quite come to grips with because they start arguing with themselves:

The Los Angeles Times editorial board not only contradicts its previous editorials on Iraq, today's editorial contradicts itself. After pushing for withdrawal from Iraq on the basis that the US and Iraqis had made no real political progress, today they argue that we should withdraw because political progress has undeniably begun. And in conclusion, they wind up arguing for exactly the opposite.

Read the post here.

And in what can only be called a major surprise, the only other far left entity to finally stop calling for withdraw after the latest legislation out of Iraq is the New York Times editorial board. Go figure.

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Engaging Al Qaeda In Diyala Province

There is some very good news out of Iraq. The al Qaeda leader responsible for using two women with Down's Syndrome as unwitting suicide bombers has been killed in Diyala. Further, U.S. and Iraqi forces are disrupting al Qaeda's refuge in Diyalah Province, one of al Qaeda's last strongholds in Iraq.

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This from Bill Rogio at the Long War Journal:

Multinational Forces Iraq has confirmed it killed a senior intelligence officer of al Qaeda in Iraq’s network in Diyala. Arkan Khalaf Khudayyir, also known as Karrar, was killed during a raid by “Coalition forces” in Khan Bani Sa’ad on Feb. 17.

. . . Karrar was described as a senior intelligence leader for al Qaeda in Iraq’s network in Baqubah. Karrar facilitated suicide bombing attacks in the Diyala River Valley. This network also has been responsible for attacks in Baghdad, “to include attacks by female suicide bombers.”

Baghdad has seen a rash of females used as bomber recently. On Feb. 1, al Qaeda in Iraq used two mentally disabled women to conduct attacks at markets in Baghdad. The bombs claimed the lives of at least 73 Iraqi civilians and wounded more than 167. The women were later confirmed to have Down's Syndrome. A director at a Baghdad mental hospital was later arrested for recruiting the women for the attacks. On Feb. 17, Iraqi soldiers in Baghdad stopped a female suicide bomber before she could reach her target. A female suicide bomber killed 7 Iraqis and wounded 15 in an attack at a traffic circle in Khan Bani Sa’ad on Jan. 16.

While Iraqi and US forces have had success denying al Qaeda in Iraq a safe haven in the Diyala region, operations against the terror network continue. On Feb. 9, Multinational Forces Iraq reported al Qaeda’s network in the Miqdadiyah region has been disrupted, and has moved to an unspecified location in Diyala province, along with other al Qaeda regional networks from Tikrit, Tarmiyah, and Baghdad.

“Numerous reports indicate members of these networks are associated with al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders operating in Tikrit, Tarmiyah and Baghdad,” Multinational Forces Iraq noted in a press release. “The network is allegedly responsible for an increase in suicide attacks in the Diyala River Valley and the construction of house-borne improvised explosive devices, anti-aircraft activity and false checkpoints. The region also serves as a key logistics pipeline for terrorists, supplies and information.”

Task Force 88 killed four al Qaeda operatives and detained 10 during a series of raids in the region. Thirteen house-borne improvised explosive devices and multiple weapons caches were found were destroyed during the operation.

. . . US and Iraqi forces launched Operation Iron Harvest in Diyala province on Jan. 9. The operation initially focused on the Miqdadiyah region, but has expanded throughout Diyala province.

Read the entire report.

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Interesting News - 11 February 2008

A summary of interesting news and posts below the fold







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Congressman Tom Lantos died today of cancer at the age of 81. Ankle Biting Pundits has more, and opines that "[w]hile I disagreed with Rep. Lantos on many issues there’s no denying what an amazing and great man he was." I concur. And you will find another very good tribute to Congressman Lantos at EU Referendum.

John McCain has picked up three major conservative endorsements from John Bolton, Jeb Bush and Gary Bauer. Joshuapundit muses about John Bolton as Secretary of State, and I agree with his analysis. "Damn the French, call the wench, bring another cup" . . . to Edmund Burke and John McCain. I find federalism much preferable to Huckalism. And move over Obama Girl . . . its McCain Babe.

Who comprises the Republican base? Big Lizards answers the question in a fascinating essay. And related thoughts at Stormwarning.

Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan, opines that the Archbishop of Canterbury "does not seem to understand that [Britain] is being targeted by a pincer movement of terrorism and cultural takeover. Meanwhile, Soccer Dad ponders the insanity of the Hate America first crowd. And the once high and mighty suffer a significant drop in the polls. It must be their platform.

Bookworm Room considers the suggestion that nonviolence will work as a tactic against the threat posed by radical Islam. As she points out, nonviolent resistance only works against moral nations and populations. Against the threat of radical Islam, adopting such a tactic would be beyond naïve.

A stark choice – to live free or die. Is dictatorship – or a politburo - the only solution to global warming. Meanwhile, there are a lot of people looking forward to a bit of that global warming in many parts of the world right now.

A good day for our soldiers in Iraq. "In addition to the 1,000 landmines, a substantial amount of munitions was found in two other caches, including 24, 57 mm rounds; nine, 130 mm artillery rounds; and 60 pounds of unknown bulk explosives."

The "social justice" education theory more a means of indoctrination in socialist philosophy than it is about education. I always thought this a cause championed by the left. Not for a moment did I realize the impetus behind this movement was George Bush.

I think we need to respond to the problem of underrepresentation in higher education with affirmative action to achieve balance.

Dr. Sanity explains Democratic party voting in light of Hillary’s narcissistic rage and the tabula rasa that is Obama.

Fight Sharia at its source. Send your beloved Salafist roses for Valentine’s Day.

Blonde Sagacity ponders the question, if our Presidential candidates were dogs, which breed would they be. Thankfully, no labs made the list. I love labs. I own three of them. They are the best dogs one could possibly own. But they are far too excitable and have no discernible foreign policy. Hmmm, I wonder if Labradoodles are the same.

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In Iraq, Al Qaeda Documents Show Crisis & Collapse

Documents captured during raids in Iraq show al Qaeda in "total collapse" in some areas and detail the combined effects of the surge and the Anbar Awakening. Surprisingly, the authors do not attribute their defeat in any way to the Democratic victory in 2006, nor do they credit the creation of the Anbar Awakening to the same.


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This today from the Times discussing the contents of al Qaeda documents found by the military during the conduct of operations in Iraq:

Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an “extraordinary crisis”. Last year's mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight”. The terrorist group's security structure suffered “total collapse”.

These are the words not of al-Qaeda's enemies but of one of its own leaders in Anbar province — once the group's stronghold. They were set down last summer in a 39-page letter seized during a US raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November.

The US military released extracts from that letter yesterday along with a second seized in another November raid that is almost as startling.

That second document is a bitter 16-page testament written last October by a local al-Qaeda leader near Balad, north of Baghdad. “I am Abu-Tariq, emir of the al-Layin and al-Mashahdah sector,” the author begins. He goes on to describe how his force of 600 shrank to fewer than 20.

. . . Assuming the two documents are authentic — and the US military insists that they are — they provide a rare insight into an organisation thrown into turmoil by the rise of the Awakening movement. More than 80,000 Sunnis have joined the tribal groups of “concerned local citizens” [CLCs] that have helped to eject al-Qaeda from swaths of western and northern Iraq, including much of Baghdad.

US intelligence officials cautioned, however, that the documents were snapshots of two small areas and that al-Qaeda was far from a spent force.

. . . The Anbar letter conceded that the “crusaders” — Americans — had gained the upper hand by persuading ordinary Sunnis that al-Qaeda was responsible for their suffering and by exploiting their poverty to entice them into the security forces. Al-Qaeda's “Islamic State of Iraq is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in al-Anbar”, the unnamed emir admitted.

In an apparent reference to al-Qaeda's brutal tactics, he said of the Americans and their Sunni allies: “We helped them to unite against us . . . The Americans and the apostates launched their campaigns against us and we found ourselves in a circle not being able to move, organise or conduct our operations.”

He said of the loss of Anbar province: “This created weakness and psychological defeat. This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight. The morale of the fighters went down . . . There was a total collapse in the security structure of the organisation.” The emir complained that the supply of foreign fighters had dwindled and that they found it increasingly hard to operate inside Iraq because they could not blend in. Foreign suicide bombers determined to kill “not less than 20 or 30 infidels” grew disillusioned because they were kept hanging about and only given small operations. Some gave up and went home.

Finally the emir recommended rewards for killing apostates, using doctors to kill infidels and offering gifts to tribal leaders. He said al-Qaeda's fighters should be sent to more promising areas such as Diyala province or Baghdad — which is exactly what happened.

Rear-Admiral Gregory Smith, the US military spokesman in Baghdad, called Abu-Tariq's testament a “woe-is-me kind of document”. It calls the Sunnis who switched sides a “cancer in the body of al-Jihad movement”, and declares: “We should have no mercy on them.”

. . . Most of the first battalion's fighters “betrayed us and joined al-Sahwah [the Awakening]”, he says. The leader of the second ran away and all but two of its 300 fighters joined the Awakening. The activities of the third were “frozen due to their present conditions”. Of the fourth he writes: “Most of its members are scoundrels, sectarians, non-believers”.

He lists 38 people still working for him but beside five names he has written comments like “We have not seen him for twenty days” or “left us a week ago”. He concludes, wistfully: “And that is the number of fighters left in my sector.”

Extracts from letters

. . . Unnamed emir, Anbar province

“The Islamic State of Iraq [al-Qaeda] is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in al-Anbar province. Al-Qaeda’s expulsion from Anbar created weakness and psychological defeat. This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight.

“The morale of the fighters went down and they wanted to be transferred to administrative positions rather than be fighters. There was a total collapse in the security structure of the organisation.”

Read the entire article.

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Former Iraqi Terrorist Discusses Iran & The Consequences of An American Withdrawal From Iraq

A former leader of the "Islamic Army" in Iraq appeared recently on Al-Arabiya TV where he discussed Iran's extensive involvement in Iraq, the consequences to Iraq if America withdraws, and the relationship between Iran and al Qaeda.






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Abu 'Azzam Al-Tamimi, a former leader in the "Islamic Army" in Iraq, was interviewed on Al-Arabiya TV on January 18. This from a translation by MEMRI:

Abu 'Azzam Al-Tamimi: . . . The resistance factions tended to reject any sort of occupation – whether Iranian, American, and so on. This changed once the Iranian activity and intervention in Iraq became very significant in the days of the Ja'fari government. Then, some [faction] leaders decided that we must reach a truce with the American forces, and reexamine our position with regard to the American forces, because of the Iranian intervention, which we consider to be more dangerous to Iraq than the American intervention, because occupation by a neighboring country is always more dangerous than occupation from afar.

Interviewer: Is there significant Iranian intervention?

Abu 'Azzam Al-Tamimi: Of course.

Interviewer: In what way?

Abu 'Azzam Al-Tamimi: Iran intervenes in every single detail in Iraq.

Interviewer: Whom does it support?

Abu 'Azzam Al-Tamimi: Everybody – it works with the government, with the opponents of the government, with the opponents of the government's opponents, with Al-Qaeda, with the enemies of Al-Qaeda, with the militias, with the enemies of the militias... Iran spreads its investments everywhere – with the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds.

Interviewer: Al-Qaeda is a Sunni organization, which claims to be fighting those they call "the Rafidites" – how can it possibly cooperate with the Iranians?

Abu 'Azzam Al-Tamimi: Of course it can. How else can you explain the fact that a large number of Al-Qaeda's leaders live in Tehran? How else can you explain the fact that the Al-Qaeda organization targets all the countries in the world – from America to Indonesia, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, and many others – and the only country absent from this list is Iran, even though it is located between Al-Qaeda's two jaws – Iraq and Afghanistan? Of course there is a very strong alliance between Al-Qaeda and Iran. There is a lot of evidence of this alliance. Iran invests in everybody in order to defend itself and its interests, and this may be legitimate, because the Iranian political regime is being targeted by...

Interviewer: What does Al-Qaeda stand to gain from its alliance with the Iranians?

Abu 'Azzam Al-Tamimi: It gets a safe haven for its leaders. No other country can give refuge to Al-Qaeda's leaders or cadres. [Iran] provides Al-Qaeda with bases and financing. Al-Qaeda is broke. It has no money now. The sources of finances in the Gulf have been bled almost completely dry. So who finances them? Iran. . .

Personally, I do not deem the American presence in Iraq a negative thing anymore. I believe an American withdrawal from Iraq at this point would spell disaster, because Iraq would then fall completely under Iranian influence – perhaps not only Iraq, but the entire region.

Read the entire transcript here. I have been harping on this point repeatedly in this blog. We face two enemies in radical Islam, with the long term threat coming from an aggressive Iranian theocracy soon to be nuclear armed (as even our spy chief, Mike McConnell now admits) The theocracy is deeply involved in Iraq and at war with us there. It is inexplicable why this is being downplayed by our State Deptartment - who are at odds with our military. A withdrawal from Iraq would be abandoning the country to Iran and an existential defeat in the war on terror. If radical Islam is to be stopped, the key ultimately lies with defeating the radical Khomeinist theocracy in Iran.

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Obama Disparages The Military & Gets A Pass On Iraq From Fox News

Whether to withdraw from Iraq has tremendous ramifications for our national security, given the effect such a withdrawal would have on Salafi terrorism and Khomeinist adventurism. Yet not a single Democrat has been seriously questioned on this by the MSM. The opportunity presented itself last night. After President Bush gave his State of the Union, Fox News reporter Major Garrett inteviewed Obama. A tenth grader interviewing Obama for the highschool newspaper could have done a better job.

Garrett asked Obama whether he thought that the surge had been a success, but Obama refused to characterize it as such. Obama acknowledged the security gains our soldiers have made in Iraq, but then termed what our soldiers are doing there to be an "occupation." Obama did not acknowledge any of the political progress by the Iraqi government towards reconciliation - that being the Iraqi Paliament's recent passage of the de-Baathification law and a law to allow former Baathists to collect government pensions. Instead, Obama stated that there has been insufficient political movement towards reconciliation to justify continuing our "occupation." Major Garrett let him get away with it without any followup.

As a threshold matter, calling our presence in Iraq an "occupation" is a slanderous mischaracterization. An occupation means that a hostile military force is exercising authority over enemy lands. There have been many "occupations" of foreign countries over the past century. One such was the Soviet occupation of much of Eastern Europe after WWII that only ended in the 80's when the Soviet Union imploded. And there is China's ongoing occupation of Tibet.

To characterize what we are doing in Iraq as an occupation dishonors our soldiers and their mission in Iraq. Our soldiers are fighting dying in Iraq to defeat terrorists that ultimately threaten our nation and to bring security and democracy to Iraq. We are fighting to win the peace from people who wish to turn Iraq into a medieval hell-hole and, in the case of Iran, a sattelite theocracy. We do so at the invitation of a democratically elected government. To claim otherwise is to equally slander and dishonor the millions of Iraqis that risked death by going to the polls to cast their ballots. To call our presence in Iraq an occupation is an Orwellian redefinition of the word.

There are of course, entities that do not want democracy to take hold in Iraq and who would welcome a defeat of the U.S. effort in Iraq, whether brought about on the battlefield or in Washington. It is no surprise that al Qaeda and Iran both call our presence and actions in Iraq an "occupation." Syria and al Jazzera call it that too. And now you can add Barack Obama to that list.

Garrett did not challenge Obama to explain the facts he was using to call our mission in Iraq an "occupation." That was some poor reporting. And it got worse.

Garrett did not challenge Obama on his refusal to acknowledge the reconciliation that has taken place in the Iraqi government. It was as if the recent actions of the Iraqi government were wished away because they would have conflicted with Obama's narrative. That was amazing.

But worst of all, Garrett did not ask Obama what the ramifications would be if Obama "ended the occupation" only to see our security gains lost and the reemergence in Iraq of al Qaeda on one hand and Iran on the other. That is the single most important question that needs to be asked and its answer should fully inform how we proceed in Iraq. The MSM refuses to ask that question, allowing Obama and the other Democratic nominees for President to simply ignore it while noting that an immediate withdraw from Iraq would move our soldiers out of the harm's way and stop the costs of war.

Put simply, the ramifications of allowing al Qaeda or Iran to succeed in Iraq are existential.

Salafi terrorism grew in the 1980's and 90's based on the belief among the Salafi jihadis that it was they who destroyed the Soviet Union. Futher, the jihadis believed that the West was so weak that it would, like the Soviet Union, crumble when pushed. And in accordance with that view, they attacked the West and America at the margins throughout the 1990's. The U.S. response to each provocation was seen by the jihadis as weak and ineffectual. Remember the Khobar Towers bombing, the bombing of our embassies in Africa, Blackhawk Down and the bombing of the USS Cole. The 9-11 attacks were simply the natural evolution of the jihadi paradigm.

Every indication that we have is that al Qaeda did not expect the robust response that actually occurred. As to our invasion of Iraq, historians can argue whether we should have done that until the cows come home. It has no bearing whatsoever on what we should do tommorow - which is the only question that matters.

With that in mind, it is beyond dispute that our invasion of Iraq drew in al Qaeda like moths to the flame. Defeating the U.S. in Iraq became, as bin Laden and Zawahiri both noted, al Qaeda's main effort. They fully expected the U.S. to run from Iraq as we did from Vietnam, if only they could cause sufficient mayhem.

Through the bravery of our soldiers and the brilliance of our military leadership, we have now completely turned around the situation in Iraq. Al Qaeda is largely defeated there and, at best, has few strongholds left. There will be no formal declaration of surrender, but we have had the next best thing from bin Laden himself. In his November,2007 video, bin Laden despaired of al Qaeda losses in Iraq and summed up the situation by stating that the "the darkeness" in Iraq has become "pitch black." (See also here)

Note that in May, 2007, with the Democrats attempting to short circuit the nascent surge and withdraw our troops, our nation's premier Orientalist, Professor Bernard Lewis, issued what can only be called a doomsday warning. Professor Lewis warned that if we withdrew from Iraq and al Qaeda was able to portray Iraq as a victory for jihad, the reprucussions of that for our nation, the West, and the entire Islamic world would be profound, long lasting and dire.

To leave now and allow Iraq to be reoccupied in the Sunni areas by al Qaeda and to allow Iran to create an Iraqi Hezbollah to dominate the south of Iraq would be a catastrophe. Regardless of how our Democrats would spin it to the American electorate, throughout the Muslim world, it would be portrayed as a victory delivered by the very hand of Allah in the face of certain defeat. It would be a messiancic sign of the eventual triumph of the radicalized Salafi and Khomeinist versions of Islam. That is not the politics of fear - its the acknowledgment of a deadly reality.

And as Professor Lewis implies, should the Muslim world ever come to see the U.S. as defeated in Iraq, we can expect jihadi attacks of all sorts on the West to rise exponentially. You can include in those probable jihadi attacks nuclear terrorism as the jihadists gain in strength and have access to nuclear weapons and the radioactive byproducts of the nuclear process.

If you any doubts about the ramifications of an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, watch this video of Zarqawi and ponder the question some more.



While leaving Iraq may result in short term political gain, relieve the pressure on our military and save the future costs of the war, the question must be asked, what are the long term costs for withdrawing from Iraq. The realistic answer to that is that the costs of leaving Iraq and allowing al Qaeda and Iran to declare victory would be exponentialy greater in blood and gold than the costs to stop both in Iraq over the coming years.

Major Garrett did not ask Obama that last night. Someone has to in the future if we are to have any sort of reasoned debate on this issue.

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Interesting News - 15 January 2008

Operation Iron Harvest is going on in Northern Iraq to push al Qaeda out of their final footholds. The Washington Post reports that the operation has resulted in 60 insurgents killed and over 200 captured during the past week. The NYT apparently missed the briefing.

The NYT is a case study in the failure of journalistic ethics and yellow journalism. Their latest the other day was a lead story clearly meant "to convince Americans that combat experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan are turning troops into murderers when they come home." True, returning vets committed or are charged with 121 murders in the United States since our current wars began. But, as Ralph Peters points out – but the Times does not – in context that means our soldiers "are five times less likely to commit a murder than their demographic peers."

And according to the NYT in an editorial yesterday, Iraq and the surge are no longer of importance to the general election. The Weekly Standard sees it a bit differently. "As the surge in Iraq has succeeded, the presidential campaign of John McCain has risen from the ashes. This is no coincidence, and the message is simple and unmistakable. The surge is now a powerful force in American politics. In the jargon of the 2008 presidential race, it's a game-changer."

The Iraqi Minister of Defense sees a security need for U.S. troops in Iraq for about another decade. He estimates that Iraq "will be able to take full control of the internal affairs of the country" by 2012. "[R]egarding protection from any external threats, our calculation appears that we are not going to be able to answer to any external threats until 2018 to 2020." The Defense Minister made these statements as the U.S. and Iraq negotiate U.S. troop presence in the country following the end of the UN mandate.

Bringing much needed sanity to the tort bar’s the search for deep pockets irrespective of responsibility is the Supreme Court with its 5-3 decision in Stoneridge Investment Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta. The court held that third party actors and business associates of the corporate entity that committed fraud cannot be held liable for the fraud if investors did not rely on their statements in making an investment decision. Read the entire decision here.

The spectre of Islamic radicalism in Pakistan is very much a Frankenstein’s monster. Radicalism was nurtured in Pakistan by Pakistan’s ISI and funded by Saudi Arabia to produce militants useful in pressuring India and controlling Afghanistan. But those radicals have long since cut the imbelical cord, and the ISI itself is suspect.

In the People’s Republic of California, the state plans to take control of the thermostats. One is both amazed at the incredible hubris of the left and the amount of damage and mischief their schemes of centralized control for the greater good of mankind inevitably portent.

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Interesting News - 1 Jan. 2008

"Never bet against the American soldier. King George III did. He lost. Jefferson Davis did. He lost. Hirohito did. He lost." And this year, it was Don Surber’s "Loser of the Year," Nancy Pelosi’s foolish bet.

As Iraqi celebrates the New Years, Brussels cancels their fireworks over threats of terrorism.

Ralph Peters interviews Gen. Petraeus on Christmas Day about the "Year of Wonders." Notable is Petraues’s explicit statement, contrary to assertions by the highest levels of our State Dept., that Iran is continuing to train and arm Shia proxies in Iraq.

Party like its 1499 B.C. This is some archeology we can all appreciate – uncovering a Bronze age Irish brewery and trying out the old recipes.

Over 150 billion petrodollars have flooded Iran’s coffers during the 30 month Presidency of Ahmedinejad. So why are Iran’s economic hardships increasing?

An interesting article on Iran’s byzantine political structures and circles of influence.

Frontpage Magazine has an interview with Homa Arjomand, the Coordinator of the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada.

Analyzing Sarkozy’s decision to end relations with Syria until Syria stops its meddling in the internal politics of Lebanon’s election of a President.

After a survey across the "length and breadth of the country," it appears that Indian men are not quite measuring up, so to speak.

The Washington Times memorializes the Canadian Islamic Congress human rights complaint against Mark Steyn, charging him with hate speech for quoting Imams. This is nothing more than Wahhabi dissimulation – the hallmark of the Wahhabi Salafi religion that claims any criticism is hate speech. And the Canadian Human Rights Commission is appeasing them. Outrageous.

From Caroline Glick: "If democracy and freedom are the U.S.’s ultimate aims in this war, the only way to achieve them is to first fight and win the war. Bhutto – like her Palestinian, Egyptian and Lebanese counterparts – was a sideshow."

At the NYT, Pinch Sulzberger welcomes the staff back from what he hopes for each was a "wonderfully secular winter solstice," announces the hiring of Bill Kristol as a columnist, and gives the staff helpful pointers on how to understand and interact with a neo-con.

A Pakastani Imam and head of a madrasa tells of his dream to bring Sharia law to Pakistan and then Britain, by force if necessary.

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Der Spiegel Interviews a Teenage Iraqi Terrorist

There is an interesting interview in Der Spiegel of a teenage boy who was recruited to become a terrorist. Unfortunately, the article does not go into detail about what group recruited the boy or many additional specifics, but it is an interesting read nonetheless, if for not then all the contradictions apparent in the article - among them: the boy's hatred of Americans in respect of the fact that its the presence of Americans near his jail that assures him good treatment; the boy would like to visit America; and the real possibility that this would be killer may in fact be straightened out by a few whacks on his thick skull by an irate father:

Many of the insurgents building bombs and carrying out attacks in Iraq are hate-filled teenagers. Diya Muhammad Hussein, 16, is one of them.

. . . It was on a Wednesday a few weeks ago when Diya Muhammad Hussein went out to kill Americans. It was shortly after one o'clock in the morning and the curfew had just begun in the western Iraq town of Rawah. Diya crept out of his brother's house and walked to the tree where he had hidden the explosive device three days before.

It was a cold night, the 16-year-old recalls as he sits on the sofa of the police chief in his home town. After several hours a patrol of US Marines approached but Diya couldn't get the batteries back in the remote control unit fast enough. The Marines drove past unharmed.

. . . Diya calls himself a mujahedeen, a freedom fighter. The Iraqi government, the coalition troops, and the population exhausted by years of violence call him a terrorist. Diya's bomb could have killed several people, the US Marines say.

. . . A few hours later he was sitting in an Internet café with his friend Ahmed and was angry. The man who had incited him to commit the attack called him a coward in an Internet chat room conversation. Diya was unaware that the police has started monitoring such Internet contacts by local youths.

He was arrested as he left the Internet café to play football with Ahmed. He still had the remote control detonator in his coat pocket.

There are a number of possible reasons why the police chief of Rawah allowed us to interview Diya. For one, the US Marines asked him to, and they support the Iraqi police with a special training program as well as occasional equipment supplies, paying for an air conditioning unit here or a flashlight there. When the American friends make a request, it's hard to turn them down.

But the police chief is also proud of the arrest his officers made. Diya may look like just an ordinary teenager as he answers questions with his hands stuffed under his armpits, but his capture has averted a lot of harm. Diya led the police to an unusually large arsenal of weapons stored in plastic barrels buried in gardens. They contained a number of explosive devices, more than a dozen detonators, two precision rifles for snipers, Kalashnikovs, three grenades, 10 rockets, rocket launchers, TNT and a hundred hand grenades.

Diya went through what one could describe as the classic career of an Iraqi insurgent. About a year ago his father decided to take his wife and 11 children away from the increasing violence in Rawah and moved his family to a rural part of the country. There, in the small village of Hassah, Diya met Maad, an experienced fighter. The older man gained Diya's confidence and kept telling him how the Americans were godless occupiers. Fighting them was the duty of every Iraqi, he said.

Diya was thrilled, wanted to join the fight. As an initiation test into the group of local muhajedeen he was told to detonate a homemade mine. He recalls being told that he could one day attack the Marines as a suicide bomber, and didn't take that offer particularly seriously. "I found the notion strange, even funny," he says.

When Diya started preparing his first mission, he had a big network of helpers at his disposal. Rawah is a town like almost every other in Iraq -- everyone knows each other, and everyone knows who has been involved in the fight against the "occupiers" in the last few years. There's scarcely a family that doesn't have at least one son or cousin who worked as a henchman or leader of the local branch of "al-Qaida in Iraq" or other terror groups.

It was Ahmed's brother who told the boys about the weapons stashes, shortly before he was arrested as an insurgent. Diya learned how to use a detonator from Anas Fa'iq, another former fighter. His name is on a long list of wanted Iraqi Qaida members which is hanging in the US Marines' command headquarters.

Diya has been lucky in one respect. The building in which he is incarcerated also houses the company of Marines stationed in Rawah. They all live on the same floor: US Marines, Iraqi police and the prisoners. The Americans guarantee the prisoners at least a minimum of good treatment.

. . . "We still hate the Americans. In truth no one likes them. Iraq isn't free, that's why we have to keep on fighting," says Diya.

What would he do if he got a visa tomorrow to travel to the US? He would definitely take it, says Diya. Asked if he is aware of how contradictory that sounds, he smiles bashfully and buries his hands deeper into his armpits.

It's the irony of fate that Diya's brother became a policeman a few days after his arrest. They've rarely been closer than they are now. Diya squats in his cell behind a barred door while his brother stands guard outside.

"He spat on me when he saw me here," says Diya. His brother told him that his father is waiting for him to be released. "My father is beside himself with rage and will punish me severely, my brother said." . . .

Read the entire article.

(H/T Eye On The World)

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A Tale of Two Iraqs & Two Wars

Retired LTG McCaffrey, now on the academic staff at West Point, has been making ongoing assessments of the situation in Iraq for several years. He has been portrayed by some as overly critical and, indeed, labeled a "Bush basher." I think that a simplistic characterization, though admittedly he is one who tends to see the glass half empty and he has long displayed a visceral dislike for former Sec. of Defense Don Rumsfeld.

McCaffrey has never made an attempt to sugar coat his assessments, though he obviously wants to see our efforts in Iraq succeed. His is a very rare and honest perspective that, combined with his military background, you cannot find elsewhere in the MSM. In this light, it is worthwhile to compare his earlier assessment of Iraq released during the dark days of March 2007, just as our new counterinsurgency statregy was being implemented (here), with his current report (here), as well as to look at these assessments of the Iraq War within the larger context of the "war on terror."

McCaffrey, in March, perceived Iraq to be caught up in a low level civil war that showed every promise of getting worse. He wrote: "[T]his whole Iraq operation is on the edge of unraveling as the poor Iraqis batter each other to death with our forces caught in the middle." He now sees the situation changed dramatically, and is obviously frustrated by those who, for political reasons, want to see Iraq fail:

The struggle for stability in the Iraqi Civil War has entered a new phase with dramatically reduced levels of civilian sectarian violence, political assassinations, abductions, and small arms/ indirect fire and IED attacks on US and Iraqi Police and Army Forces.

This is the unmistakable new reality ---and must be taken into account as the US debates its options going forward. The national security debate must move on to an analysis of why this new political and security situation exists---not whether it exists.

McCaffrey may as well as have been addressing his statements directly to Harry Reid, who only yesterday boldly claimed that al Qaeda in Iraq was resurgent and that America was once again losing.

McCaffrey assesses that the Iraqi central government is broken and the Iraqi Constitution unworkable, though unfortunately he does not expound upon those observations. That said, McCaffrey perceives that Iraq is developing effective governance at the grass roots level and that it is "is entirely credible that a functioning Iraqi state will slowly emerge from the bottom up." That proposition is of particular importance to the current debate on Iraq. Harry Reid aside, those Democrats who still seek to legislate withdrawal from Iraq do so on the justification that the Iraqi government has failed to enact the "benchmarks" that would allow for an effective government. If McCaffrey is accurate in his assessment, yes, the government is broken, and yes, top down imposition of the "bench marks" is unlikely to occur, but ultimately, it doesn't matter. This needs to inform the debate on how to go forward in Iraq.

It is curious that McCaffrey still characterizes what is occurring in Iraq as a "civil war," a defined term in the military lexicon based on specific conditions that do not seem to exist in Iraq today. Certainly there is the possibility that such could occur, but given the huge decrease in violence and the role of Iran in fomenting violence, this label, standing alone, seems arguably wrong and pretty clearly simplistic. Unfortunately, while he applies this label, he does not provide justification.

McCaffrey sees the development of professional Iraqi security forces and police as the lynchpin of creating a stable Iraq. In March, what he observed seemed hopeless:

The police force is feared as a Shia militia in uniform which is responsible for thousands of extra-judicial killings. There is no effective nation-wide court system. There are in general almost no acceptable Iraqi penal institutions. The population is terrorized by rampant criminal gangs involved in kidnapping, extortion, robbery, rape, massive stealing of public property ---such as electrical lines, oil production material, government transportation, etc. (Saddam released 80,000 criminal prisoners.)

The Iraqi Army is too small, very badly equipped. . . The Iraqi Army is also unduly dominated by the Shia, and in many battalions lacks discipline. There is no legal authority to punish Iraqi soldiers or police who desert their comrades. (The desertion/AWOL numbers frequently leave Iraqi Army battalions at 50% strength or less.)

Today, McCaffrey sees the situation significantly changed:

The Iraqi Security Forces are now beginning to take a major and independent successful role in the war. Under the determined leadership of LTG Jim Dubik ---both the equipment and force levels of the Iraqi Security Forces are now for the first time in the war at a realistic level of resource planning.

The previously grossly ineffective and corrupt Iraqi Police have been forcefully re-trained and re-equipped. The majority of their formerly sectarian police leadership has been replaced. The police are now a mixed bag--- but many local units are now effectively providing security and intelligence penetration of their neighborhoods. . . .

If all else were to remain unchanged, it would seem that Iraq is on a forward trajectory to a peaceful, functional society in the foreseeable future. There are two major wildcards. One is the influence of Iran that McCaffrey only touches upon briefly in his report. The other is one that has been just below the surface for years. That is the problem of the Kurdish north.

Under our umbrella of protection after the first Gulf War, the Kurds became a separate country and, after the fall of Saddam, made clear that they had no desire to reintegrate into a larger Iraq. They have tried to stay out of the ambit of national laws, attempted to exercise control over oil assets in the north - including the passage of their own hydrocarbon laws in August in direct opposition to the Iraq central government - and manuevered to take control of Kirkuk and Mosul. They have played against our efforts over the past several years to create a united Iraq, and, as McCaffrey notes, the Kurdish north could easily become the next major battleground:

The Kurds are a successful separate autonomous state – with a functioning and rapidly growing economy, a strong military (Both existing Pesh Merga Forces and nominally Iraqi-Kurdish Army divisions), a free press, relative security, significant foreign investment, and a growing tourist industry which serves as a neutral and safe meeting place for separated and terrified Sunni and Shia Arab families from the south.

There are Five Star hotels, airline connections to Europe, a functioning telephone system, strong trade relations with Syria, enormous mutually beneficial trade relations with Turkey, religious tolerance, a functional justice system, and an apparently enduring cease-fire between the traditional Kurdish warring factions.

Kurdish adventurism and appetite to confront both their external neighbors and the Iraqi central state may have been tempered in a healthy way by the prospect of invasion from the powerful Turkish Armed Forces to avenge the continued cross-border KKP terrorism.

The war-after-next will be the war of the Iraqi Arabs against the Kurds ---when Mosul as well as Kirkuk and its giant oil basin (and an even greater Kurdish claimed buffer zone to the south) is finally and inevitably absorbed (IAW the existing Constitution) by the nascent Kurdish state. The only real solution to this dread inevitability is patient US diplomacy to continually defer the fateful Kurdish decision ad infinitum.

David Ignatius has a good column on this issue in the Washington Post.

There can be little doubt that what has occurred over the past 48 hours goes to the heart of this issue. Approximately two days ago, the U.S. provided actionable intelligence to Turkey as to PKK locations. Turkey subsequently engaged those PKK elements by air and with cross border raids. If the Kurds harbored any illusions that we might remain neutral while they brought Iraq back into open warfare in order to satisfy their separatist aspirations, they should be disabused of those beliefs now. This is a major problem that will not go away soon, but it is one that we absolutely must contain.

McCaffrey sees a need for a long term U.S. presence in Iraq as is currently being negotiatiated between Bush and Maliki. He sees this necessary both to stabilize the nascent Iraqi government and to "hold at bay Iraq’s neighbors from the desperate mischief they might cause that could lead to all out Civil War with regional involvement." Its hard to underestimate the importance of maintaining bases in Iraq. After the recent NIE removed the justification for using force against Iran as to its nuclear program, maintaining forces in Iraq may be our only option to provide some check on Iran's regional aspirations towards its neighbor. Yet this is another area that our far left - including our Democratic Presidential candidates - are contesting.

McCaffrey’s report contains numerous other observations, some promising, some highly troubling - all well worth your read. As to a final note here, in March, McCaffrey wrote of al Qaeda in Iraq and the Shia insurgency:

Iraq is ripped by a low grade civil war which has worsened to catastrophic levels with as many as 3000 citizens murdered per month. The population is in despair. Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate. A handful of foreign fighters (500+) --- and a couple of thousand Al Qaeda operatives incite open factional struggle through suicide bombings which target Shia holy places and innocent civilians. Thousands of attacks target US Military Forces (2900 IED’s) a month---primarily stand off attacks with IED’s, rockets, mortars, snipers, and mines from both Shia (EFP attacks are a primary casualty producer) ---and Sunni (85% of all attacks---80% of US deaths—16% of Iraqi population.)

In his current assessment, McCaffrey states that al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated "tactically and operationally" - that's military speak for 'wiped out as a functioning force.' Further, McCaffrey observes that "[t]he senior leaders of AQI have become walking dead men because of the enormous number of civilian intelligence tips coming directly to US Forces." (Update: See this post at Gateway Pundit discussing our recent successes against al Qaeda's leadership) McCaffrey explains that al Qaeda was broken by a mix of exceptional soldiering and diplomacy by our combat forces wearing two hats and the fact that al Qaeda was far too fanatical and insufficiently nationalistic for the vast majority of Iraq's Sunnis. All that said, McCaffrey observes that al Qaeda is attempting to "reconstitute along the Syrian border."

McCaffrey does not address what possibility there exists for a reconstituted al Qaeda to regain a foothold in Iraq as U.S. forces inevitably stand down. It would seem small indeed given that al Qaeda has lost virtually all support among Iraq's Sunni population and given that Iraqi security forces are beginning to become efficient and capable.

That said, while Iraq has been a great defeat for al Qaeda, al Qaeda is hardly defeated. Because al Qaeda is an amorphous threat centered upon the Salafi / Wahhabi religious ideal, it will forever replicate until the idea is itself altered or defeated. Our military in foreign lands and our national security personnel at home have been tasked with meeting the immediate threat of al Qaeda and its ideological brethern. Both our military and our national security personnel have been incredibly successful, but at a great cost in national treasure and in blood.

The problem is that defeating the immediate threat, while an absolute necessity, will not end the long term threat. Like some nightmare phoenix, al Qaeda and their ideological brethern who would act to impose Islam on the world will continue to arise from their own ashes so long as that which animates them – i.e., the "radical" religious ideals that comprise Wahhabi / Salafi Islam – go unchecked.

If we are able to build and sustain some semblance of a free and democratic society in Iraq, that will likely have some impact on this problem. But the fact still remains that we are seeing Wahhabi / Salafi ideals spread across the globe, including within our country, while the majority of our elected officials at best remain silent, and at worst, put other concerns over this potentially existential national security threat. You will find no better example of that than this story here, discussing Salafi infiltration of our education system, and here, discussing how Democrats have gutted legislation to address the issue. (Update: See also here, discussing Saudi influence at our universities, this post, discussing Saudi influence now being felt at Fox News, and this post, discussing libel tourism to silence publicity about Saudi involvment in terrorism and terrorist financing). Moreover, the fact that President Bush has yet to publicly identify Wahhabi / Salafi Islam as the source of Sunni terrorism is itself equally egregious. That said, the NYPD and certain members of our Congress have done so, but there must be much more.

I am not suggesting in the least that we should change any of our First Amendment freedoms to address the problems of othodox Wahhabi / Salafi Islam. Rather, I fully concur with the views of Zhudi Jasser as reported in the Washington Times earlier this month:

Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix physician and a Muslim who is chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, says Islamic governments are looking for a free pass.

"Islamists such as the radical fundamentalists seen with the Saudi Wahhabis exploit American universal tolerance to provide a vehicle for the dissemination of their propaganda free of critique," he said in an e-mail. "It is important to emphasize — 'free of critique' ... it is the tolerance which permits that. But I would hope that we correct our response not by changing our tolerance but by intensely critiquing political Islam and its incompatibility with our pluralistic democracy. America"s laboratory of freedom and liberty should not change."

It is at least some of the core Wahhabi / Salafi ideals that need to be identified and addressed to defeat the long term threat of radical Islam. Our soldiers have paid with their blood and we have all paid with our national treasure to defeat the immediate threat. It is long past time to demand honesty and political courage from our legislators to identify and address the long term threat. Failure to do so only ups the ante in blood and gold that we will have to pay in the long run. Our government at the highest level has the responsibiliity to lead that charge. Ignoring the ultimate source of Sunni terrorism and hiding it behind generic names such as "Islamofacism" is both craven and a critical failing that goes to the heart of our long term national security.

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