Where Are the Foreign Fighters?
By streiff Posted in War — Comments (37) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Ordinarily one would think that indications that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Iraq operation is on the verge of extinction would be good news. In a sane world, in a world where significant portions of the American press were not more interested in damaging the administration than in reporting facts or keeping its editorials off the front page, it would.
That is not the world inhabited by the Washington Post.
Read on.
The issue of foreign fighters in Iraq is a key component of the left’s critique of the war. Foreign fighters in Iraq enable the left to point to Iraq as a present and future failure because foreigners are found nearly exclusively in the ranks of al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq or AQIZ and they represent the claim that the war in Iraq is creating rather than suppressing terrorism.
In brief, the critique runs something like this:
Our presence in Iraq has so outraged the muslim world that radicalized young men are streaming into Iraq to participate in the war in the same way they participated in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Not only does our presence in Iraq become a “recruiting sergeant” (in the words of some British twit) for al-Qaeda, it provides them with combat training, and then they go home to spread their knowledge and the doctrine of radical islamism in their home countries destabilizing them. In addition, the draw of jihad ensures, presumably, a near endless supply of volunteers creating a Middle Eastern version of Space Invaders.
As the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says:
Iraq has become a "post-graduate faculty for terrorism" and is attracting thousands of foreigners who could foment violence when they return home, the head of Canada's spy agency said in an interview published on Thursday.
Jim Judd, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told the Toronto Star newspaper that a new generation of militants was using the war in Iraq to get first-hand experience.
"We all obviously hope the conflict in Iraq ends soon, but then worry about what all these people are going to do," he said. "They will re-migrate around the world and return home.
He is seconded by various Euros:
"Iraq is a live-fire training ground in urban terrorism, and that's exactly what we fear," said Francois Heisbourg, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.
"Islamic terrorism is a much bigger problem in Europe than in the U.S. because you don't have the relatively large Muslim community that we do," said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform in London. "What the war in Iraq has done is radicalize these people and make some of them prepared to support terrorism. Iraq is a great recruiting sergeant."
In the inimitable Foreign Fighters Meme many of these suppositions were exposed as fraudulent. Now the Washington Post reports:
Before 8,500 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers methodically swept through Tall Afar two months ago in the year's largest counterinsurgency offensive, commanders described the northern city as a logistics hub for fighters, including foreigners entering the country from Syria, 65 miles to the west.
"They come across the border and use Tall Afar as a base to launch attacks across northern Iraq," Col. H.R. McMaster, commander of the Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which led the assault, said in a briefing the day before it began.
When the air and ground operation wound down in mid-September, nearly 200 insurgents had been killed and close to 1,000 detained, the military said at the time. But interrogations and other analyses carried out in recent weeks showed that none of those captured was from outside Iraq. According to McMaster's staff, the 3rd Armored Cavalry last detained a foreign fighter in June.
I’d call that significant. Killing 200. Capturing 1,000. Perhaps even a metric because it certainly would be if the numbers were reversed. In theory, the foreigners could have run away or all the foreigners were among the dead. But it is unlikely that interrogations by the nefarious methods American troops are known to use would fail to reveal either of those alternatives.
More significantly these data would indicate that al-Zarqawi’s faction is a small and diminishing element in Iraq and, though capable of spectacular acts of outrage, probably militarily and politically insignificant.
Unfortunately, an acknowledgment that a year of concentrated focus on eliminating al-Zarqawi’s group and its takfirist straphangers, beginning with Falluja in November 2004, through the battle for Mosul in December 2004-February 2005, through Operations HUNTER and STEEL CURTAIN, has succeeded forces the press into a quandary. It has to address the logical extensions:
- If there are virtually no foreign fighters left in Iraq then there are no swarms of apprentice jihadis joining the fight.
- If there are only a few apprentice jihdadis swarming to the fight, then Iraq is not a “recruiting sergeant” for al-Qaeda.
- If there are no jihadis joining the fight then Iraq is not radicalizing muslims more than the average Middle Eastern muslim is already radicalized.
- And if there are virtually no foreign fighters left in Iraq then there are virtually no foreign fighters to return home and cause trouble or to spread radical islam and terrorism to third nations.
- And Iraq is almost certainly not a post-graduate school or live-fire training ground for terrorists
This leads inexorably to some other conclusions:
- Absent an inflow of foreigners we are fighting a homegrown insurgency composed of Ba’ath revanchists, criminal gangs, and conceivably some smaller number of Iraqi nationalists.
- If the insurgency in homegrown, it will inevitably be swamped by the combination of US and Iraqi security forces.
- If the insurgency is homegrown, its ideology is either Ba’athism or some form of Iraqi nationalism in either case its adherents don’t present any real risk to other nations in the region.
But the story line the Post picks up is the ever popular BushLied™
Top U.S. military officials here have long emphasized the influence of groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgent network led by a Jordanian, Abu Musab Zarqawi. But analysts say the focus on foreign elements is also an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the insurgency in the eyes of Iraqis, by portraying it as terrorism foisted on the country by outsiders.
"Both Iraqis and coalition people often exaggerate the role of foreign infiltrators and downplay the role of Iraqi resentment in the insurgency," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a former Pentagon official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who is writing a book about the Iraqi insurgency.
"It makes the government's counterinsurgency efforts seem more legitimate, and it links what's going on in Iraq to the war on terrorism," he continued. "When people go out into battle, they often characterize enemies in the most negative way possible. Obviously there are all kinds of interacting political prejudices they can bring out by blaming outsiders."
That’s right. Nothing to see here folks, move right along. There never were foreign fighters, it was just the Administration lying about the intelligence to demonize the opposition. We always said there was no link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
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Where Are the Foreign Fighters? 37 Comments (0 topical, 37 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I have been arguing for a long time that the insurgency consists almost exclusively of Iraqis, citing reports from our own military that "foreign fighters" make up less than 5% of the insurgency, and possibly much less.
All of a sudden the Right agrees with me, but it somehow serves to prove they are right about everything? Maybe so, but my initial reaction is bafflement.
You, my friend, are not the left. You are a small fragment of it. And no one on the right has ever argued anything resembling your assertion that we said foreigners were a sizeable portion of the insurgency.
Everyday I can guaratee a dozen posts from little Kosers making the same case over and over. Foreigners flooding in, radicalizing, spreading terror, creating terrorists, flypaper, yadda yadda.
If all of these things are true, then our continued presence in Iraq is vital to US national interests... how?
Iraq provided documents to terrorist groups, they allowed their diplomatic pouch and embassies to be use by terrorists, they paid bounties to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, they were on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
As Bush said back on September 20, 2001:
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
I'm not asking you agree with it but to somehow claim that Iraq doesn't fit into the war on terror because Zarqawi has had his butt kicked is just disingenous.
The problem is that you're confusing the way the war on terror can be won. It cannot be won by simply killing all the terrorists. That's not to say we shouldn't kill terrorists where and when we can. But it is admitting that killing every terrorist in the world is an impossibility. The way you win is by proving to the Middle East that terrorism against the West is unnecessary.
Saddam was a credible threat to stability in the region. Perhaps you can argue that point, I don't much care because there is no arguing that he was a horrific dictator. Few people shed tears for the fall of his government.
Now, the terrorists have long been claiming that it is the intent of the United States to enslave/Christianize/Zionize/plunder/etc. the Middle East. Many leftists in the country have only added fuel to their fire by agreeing. I hope you are not among them. These extremists also claimed when we went to Iraq that we were coming to conquer and finally do all these horrible things they'd warned of.
So, what happens when all their lies don't pan out? What happens if Iraq becomes a stable, free, democratic society? What happens when Islamic Middle Easterners live better, happier lives because of US intervention? Far from radicalizing the Muslim world, the long term effect is that the average Muslim sees the United States as far less of a threat. We will have essentially proven our good intentions and the superiority of Democracy over dictatorships. Saddam was such a dictator that we could use as a testing grounds for this idea.
Now, I will admit that this is basically a grandiose experiment. There are a lot of things that can go wrong. Should the Democrats regain power, they may betray our Iraqi allies as they once did our South Vietnamese allies. Most liberals like to forget that South Vietnam held on it's own for 3 years after American troops had pulled out. The country only fell when Democrats in Congress pulled all funding that was being used to support our allies. Something similar might happen in Iraq. It is conceivable that we would pull out of Iraq but give monetary support to the government. The Democrats, not willing to give Bush a good legacy, might do the same thing they did when they wanted to prevent Nixon from having any sort of positive legacy.
Perhaps the experiment will fail regardless, but for the moment I see Democrats as being the largest threat to it's success. Which is a shame, because if the experiment is successful it will mean greater peace and prosperity for the world as a whole. Certainly, it is better to at least try. Failure to do anything productive before 9/11 only lead to increasing boldness and size amongst the terrorists. We cannot simply then revert to our pre-9/11 strategies.
It seems we both agree that the relative number of foreign fighters in the insurgency, as of today, seems to be rather small. That obviously doesn't address the question of how long it has been that way. I deliberately didn't go there because I think it goes to the issue of whether the war was a good idea in the first place, etc., and we're obviously not going to find common ground on that.
The point of my comment was simply to focus on the here and now. Let me stipulate for the sake of argument that invading Iraq in 2003 was absolutely, positively, the #1 best thing we could have done to advance the War on Terror. My point is that, judging by the discussions on withdrawal the past few days, everyone on the Right seems to view our continued presence in Iraq as being just as vital. And so the question I asked was, looking at it strictly from the perspective of this day forward, how is our continued presence in Iraq vital to US national interests? I ask this in good faith.
I don't think the point of invading Iraq was to bait al-Quaeda. It was to deny them a very dangerous ally and base of operations. A healthy Iraq should reject the al-Quaeda virus. It seems we are making progress.
The point of contiuning the war in terms of the foreign fighters that are there--if they go home victorious, they become capable of inspiring legions of followers. If they lose, or die, they make a sorry recruiting poster.
has always been small and as I state here I think that the Left has hyped the foreign fighters issue because it, de facto, makes Iraq a failure because foreigners implies your are creating more terroists than you are killing or capturing.
From my point of view I hope we have a troop presence in Iraq of about 50,000 (corps headquarters plus thee divisions) for the next couple of decades. Any way we look at it, Iran remains a threat to our interests and based on their actions to date they pose a significant threat to the new government in Iraq.
The more troops we have on the Iranian frontier the smaller the Iraqi army can be and the odds of a coup goes way down.
If you want to look at my stuff from over a year ago you'll see I've been consistent in pegging Zarqawi as sideshow.
I don't know where this "flypaper" idea originated but it was obvious from Day One that if that is your strategy you don't strongarm countries to keep fighters from going to Iraq, you might give them plane tickets and extra frequent flier miles.
Our continued presence in Iraq is vital to US national interests in much the same way that our presence in West Germany after WW2 or our presence in S. Korea after the Korean War were vital to US national interests. In all three cases, we needed and need to have significant military presence and bases close to the enemy. In Germany, that was the Soviet threat. In S. Korea, that was the Chinese/N.Korean threat. In Iraq, it's the Islamist threat (Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.). We fought communism in WW3; we now fight islamism in WW4.
Keeping in mind that we probably should leave Germany and S. Korea respectively now -- after some forty plus years of having boots on the ground in both places -- I'd say it is most definitely vital to our national interests to help the Iraqi people establish a functioning (if contentious and anti-US in rhetoric, the way Germany and S. Korea are now) democracy and market economy. I promise that forty years from now, if our troops are still in a democratic Iraq where people run for office bashing America, I will support bringing them home.
-TS
Useful imperfect model is Spain for the Nazi supermen warriors, late 30s: especially special ops like Luftwaffe fighter pilots and junior officer class: smell the action, move in and out of combat, posture against the Red element, propaganda for the bully boys.
Zarqawi commands a racist superstructure, most elitist, made up of slumming Chechens, same for the shooters from Hamas, Hizb Al Aqsa, and the desert crowd from north Yemen, East Africa; but the Jordanians and Saudis are big dogs here.
Cannon fodder are Sunni jihad boys from desert clans - shooters for hire -- chiefly the gun running, body drug IED smuggling Shamar clan of Syria to SA.
Recall this dust up was planned from summer 02 by Sov Fr NK and Syr hirelings, with Jordan as middle man.
Many faces.
Wapo not good Intel: parochial thinking: what does it mean for Bush polls? what does it mean for Congress elect? Minor noise.
Larger war: Iq is theater: big map ahead, like 1942.
See Bodansky SECRET HISTORY OF THE IRAQ WAR, Harper Regan 2004.
Iraq clans Shia weighted, waiting for US to depart, then make deals with Iran and SA and shut down ad for business Zarqawi crowd.
Worst threat from theater is spec ops bad guys ack through Bosnia to Euraia.
Chechens are dangerous, but frustrated that Marines do not fight sloppy like Sov spec ops in Grozny.
More and more this is small team action.
Marines and USA elements are battle champs. No contest. See Kaplan IMPERIAL GRUNTS, see Bing West NO TRUE GLORY. Marines own sky. UAV flown from Nevada. Alpha Whiskey Romeo is signal to F-18 for laser guided 500 pounder: Allah's Waiting Room splat.
in haste
ps: Freeh on Monday re Able Danger: also voice on West Africa uranium mines in hands of French capos.
I'm pretty sure I remember the right hyping the foreign fighters issue, as it proved that, post-Saddam, we weren't occupying Iraq against the wishes of its people, but protecting Iraq from foreign antagonists.
That is a concept the left ahs forgotten.
When one is winning, the enemy can't replace the assets the good guys destroy. We are the good guys, and we are destroying a righteous amount of their assets, both human and material.
We will continue to do so until Zarqawi and the rest of the festering cancer that is Al Qaeda is destroyed.
We will prevent iraq from descening back into tyranny because it is our foot at the neck of Iran and its terrorist regime.
We will stay in Iraq as we stayed in Germany and Japan until the society and the world makes sense for us to leave.
We will not abandon our friends in Iraq like we did our friends in Vietnam, nad have yet another million or two or threee deaths on our heads.
First, that individuals inclined toward terrorism by our actions in Iraq will relocate there to fight. It may be that the left is incorrect in its assertion that Iraq itself is providing an actual training ground for these people, but it doesn't mean that our presence there isn't inspiring more terrorism than it prevents (I'm not saying that's the case, but it's not something you can disprove at this time either).
Second, that because foreigners comprise only a small portion of the insurgency, their numbers are numerically small. 1000 militant jihadists is still 1000 militant jihadists, regardless of whether they're 100% of 1000 or 2% of 50,000.
I just think that "Canadian" and "Security Intelligence Service" sound odd when used in the same sentence.
that Zarqawi himself is a foreign fighter. Born in Jordan. Fought the Russians in Afghanistan. Returned to Jordan. Jailed for participation in plot against Hussein (the Jordanian one). Back to Afghanistan to serve under bin Laden. Then to Iraw. Now his ops are back in Jordan blowing up hotels.
Maybe most of his compadres these days are Iraqi. But he's not.
And like Iraq and Iran, Iraw starts with IRA!
First, that individuals inclined toward terrorism by our actions in Iraq will relocate there to fight. It may be that the left is incorrect in its assertion that Iraq itself is providing an actual training ground for these people, but it doesn't mean that our presence there isn't inspiring more terrorism than it prevents (I'm not saying that's the case, but it's not something you can disprove at this time either).
I think it's pretty easy to prove or disprove. In which Middle Eastern or Southwest Asian nations... or Eurabian nations for that matter... do you find an increase in terrorism that appears to be related to Iraq from people who were not previously known as terrorists?
If you are right, so what? Where are they acting out?
But were I in a charitable mood and gave that one factor to you, it would still be dwarfed by what is demonstrably wrong that has been claimed to be correct.
Second, that because foreigners comprise only a small portion of the insurgency, their numbers are numerically small. 1000 militant jihadists is still 1000 militant jihadists, regardless of whether they're 100% of 1000 or 2% of 50,000.
First, this is not an assumption that I make at all because this statement is just silly. I don't address a percentage of foreign fighters anywhere. I do address the absolute number of foreigners in a link from the story. But if it is a 1000 then the foreign fighter meme is done.
I'm not sure you represent the whole Right on this issue any more than I represent the whole Left. Keep in mind, the idea that "we are fighting the terrorists in Iraq" is pretty central to a certain vision of why it's important.
I could find you some links and such but I'm going to be here at the office all night if I keep hanging out in Blogistan, so I'll try to get to it later.
IMO the case you make is sensible but at some point it's going to have to be laid out for the American people. I understand the President can't just stand up and say "we need to stick around for 10 years to keep an eye on Iraq" or anything like that, but if it becomes conventional wisdom that there aren't many foreign fighters left in Iraq, a lot of people are going to be curious what we're still doing there.
I've actually discussed the concept of leaving a certain amount of US troops in the Kurdish area of Iraq with my fellow travelers (by your standards of course), for the same reason you sight (keeping Iran in check) and they thought that was a nifty idea. The Kurds truely do like us and if they want us there, we should stay. How many, I don't know.
But if you plan on keeping them in the general Bagdad area...bad idea. We'd be target practice and would just fuel the existing anti-American flames.
We need to be out-of-site-out-of-mind over there. In fact THE main meme the left (and a fair amount of conseratives) has for advocating some kind of timetable for withdrawal is because the insurgency is against US troops and if the troops leave the insurgency has no reasons to fight, other than advocating killing other Iraqis and Muslims. And that will expose them to be the thugs they are and they will lose all support. That point was made about and you did not respond.
I never thought that the foreign fighter thing was a left/right issue. Depending on the situation, each used it for its cause. Case in point, President Bush's speech before soldiers at Fort Bragg includes this:
Some of the violence you see in Iraq is being carried out by ruthless killers who are converging on Iraq to fight the advance of peace and freedom. Our military reports that we have killed or captured hundreds of foreign fighters in Iraq who have come from Saudi Arabia and Syria, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and others. They are making common cause with criminal elements, Iraqi insurgents, and remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime who want to restore the old order. They fight because they know that the survival of their hateful ideology is at stake. They know that as freedom takes root in Iraq, it will inspire millions across the Middle East to claim their liberty, as well. And when the Middle East grows in democracy and prosperity and hope, the terrorists will lose their sponsors, lose their recruits, and lose their hopes for turning that region into a base for attacks on America and our allies around the world.
Some wonder whether Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Among the terrorists, there is no debate. Hear the words of Osama Bin Laden: "This Third World War is raging" in Iraq. "The whole world is watching this war." He says it will end in "victory and glory, or misery and humiliation."
In a January 8 NYTimes story about the legal status of foreign fighters captured in Iraq, the Attorney General is shown to think that there are quite a few of them.
Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, testifying Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on his nomination to become attorney general, noted that the Justice Department had issued a legal opinion last year saying non-Iraqis captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
''We had members of Al Qaeda, intent on killing Americans, flooding into or coming into Iraq,'' Mr. Gonzales testified. ''And the question was legitimately raised, in my judgment, as to whether or not -- what were the legal limits about how to deal with these terrorists.''
The Washington Times on June 29, 2004 had this to say:
Mr. Allawi has hinted that he might impose martial law in Iraq until he gets the terrorists - most of whom are thought to be foreign fighters - under control.
The Air Force Times in a December 8, 2003 brief has this critical take on Rumsfeld's cynical claims concering foreign fighters:
WHAT'S UP: For months, Washington officials have pointed fingers at Iran and Syria for supposedly allowing al-Qaida and other anti-Western militants free passage into U.S.-governed Iraq. "We know they are coming," top U.S. administrator Paul Bremer said in Iraq in early November. "There is no question." And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says at least 200 foreign fighters have slipped into Iraq. Under U.S. pressure, Syria has tightened its border patrols.
WHAT'S NEXT: Local news reports suggest most al-Qaida sympathizers actually are crossing over from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, both U.S. allies. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting, citing interviews with former Iraqi officers in Basra, said about 4,500 Islamic militants now are in Iraq and are slipping through Kuwait's Abdali-Safwan crossing point, as well as the vast desert border of Saudi Arabia, where nomad guides will escort anyone for a few hundred dollars, no questions asked. According to Kuwaiti news reports, Kuwaiti authorities have increased border patrols and directed them to shoot anyone who doesn't respond to their orders.
Tony Snow put the question very directly to Rumsfeld 6 months after the invasion (November 2, 2003).
SNOW: Do we have any idea how many foreign fighters are actually in Iraq?
RUMSFELD: We know we've collected up -- we have prisoners of somewhere between 200 and 300. We know we've killed a lot. How many we haven't found is hard to know.
And I guess it's also the question, what do you mean by foreign fighters? A lot of these folks have three or four passports.
There's an organization called Ansar al-Islam, which was in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was there, it was functioning, and Saddam Hussein knew all about it. And they, then, went into Iran when we invaded the country. And they're now back in.
So they are foreign, in the sense that they just came back in from Iran. And we're now in the process of finding them and capturing or killing them.
Again, the characterization of these foreign fighter claims as from exclusively the left is dead wrong. The administration has pumped this story for a long time.
...With Alex Baldwin. That also explains how the head of the Canadian Intelligence Service became such an expert on the subject without leaving Ontario.
Doesn't matter to me...Dead bad guys is dead bad guys. The more dead bad guys, the better. Don't care where they come from. Just so long as they don't go back - cuz' they're dead bad guys.
back then. I have nolinks to anything that old, but back then my sources were all links to the MSM wire services (AP, Reuters, etc) via Yahoo's home page.
The more I look at the nature of the information being gathered by both the Left and the Right the more I realize it to be apples to oranges comparisons. The Left and the Right are simply not looking at the same sources of information. With so many different media outlets these days we have customized our personal data inputs to the point where we only hear what we want to hear and we only discuss what we want to discuss.
That leads to an ever larger gap between the beliefs of both sides since they don't even start out with the same givens as their foundation.
I look at the Lefty sites and they are simply discussing subjects that are totally different than those discussed by the Right leaning sites.
The reason we so disagree on our national course of action is that we don't even appear to live in the same country. That's got to stop. We need to all look at common sources of information from a single pewrspective and we need to be on the same page in our discussions, or at least in the same book or we're going to lose this country.
wishes of America's people
Bush
gop house and senate
gop govs and state legs
I think that is one of those statements that sounds insightful (sort of like saying "Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11" as a retort to anyone who says "Iraq was brought on by 9-11") but ranges from dishonest (if you know better) to banal.
The fact is that MOST attacks by the insurgents are directed against Iraqi police, Iraqi army, and Iraqi government officials including rural clinic doctors and teachers. Fact. Not supposition. The blinders here are in not seeing the Iraqis as being involved in this struggle.
Contrary to the statement, the insurgents cells in the past year have largely avoided making contact with US forces if they can avoid it. This is the genius of the roadside bomb. It takes one guy, safely hidden, to carry out the attack.
read either the story, I think not.
Case in point, President Bush's speech before soldiers at Fort Bragg includes this:
Some of the violence you see in Iraq is being carried out by ruthless killers who are converging on Iraq to fight the advance of peace and freedom. Our military reports that we have killed or captured hundreds of foreign fighters in Iraq who have come from Saudi Arabia and Syria, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and others. They are making common cause with criminal elements, Iraqi insurgents, and remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime who want to restore the old order. They fight because they know that the survival of their hateful ideology is at stake. They know that as freedom takes root in Iraq, it will inspire millions across the Middle East to claim their liberty, as well. And when the Middle East grows in democracy and prosperity and hope, the terrorists will lose their sponsors, lose their recruits, and lose their hopes for turning that region into a base for attacks on America and our allies around the world.
Nice cut and paste but it doesn't do anything to further your case. No one has denied there were foreign fighters. This is a statement of fact. Please read the story and links before posting.
In a January 8 NYTimes story about the legal status of foreign fighters captured in Iraq, the Attorney General is shown to think that there are quite a few of them.
To the contrary is says nothing of the kind.
The Washington Times on June 29, 2004 had this to say:
Mr. Allawi has hinted that he might impose martial law in Iraq until he gets the terrorists - most of whom are thought to be foreign fighters - under control.
Over a year ago. Pre-Falluja. Again, read the story and links before posting.
The Air Force Times in a December 8, 2003 brief has this critical take on Rumsfeld's cynical claims concering foreign fighters:
Pre-invasion. Please read the story before posting.
SNOW: Do we have any idea how many foreign fighters are actually in Iraq?
RUMSFELD: We know we've collected up -- we have prisoners of somewhere between 200 and 300. We know we've killed a lot. How many we haven't found is hard to know.
And I guess it's also the question, what do you mean by foreign fighters? A lot of these folks have three or four passports.
There's an organization called Ansar al-Islam, which was in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was there, it was functioning, and Saddam Hussein knew all about it. And they, then, went into Iran when we invaded the country. And they're now back in.
So they are foreign, in the sense that they just came back in from Iran. And we're now in the process of finding them and capturing or killing them.
Pre-invasion. Please read the story before posting.
Again, the characterization of these foreign fighter claims as from exclusively the left is dead wrong. The administration has pumped this story for a long time.
This has been a waste of time and bandwidth. You obviously did not read the story or if you did your level of reading comprehension so extraordinarily low that you couldn't understand what you'd read. You obviously didn't bother to read the supplementary links to the story.
None, not a single one, of the snippets you posted was relevant to the story in any way shape or form.
I am left with the choice between thinking you are simply stupid or dishonest. I'll give you the benefit of a doubt and assume you are stupid.
Go away. Get a tutor. Learn to read. And then bother someone else.
If the insurgency in homegrown, it will inevitably be swamped by the combination of US and Iraqi security forces."
What is inevitable about this? Last estimate I saw was roughly 230,000 insurgents matched against 130,000 US troops. Yes, the US troops have the advantage of firepower and technology, but eh insurgents have the adavantage of home turf and substantial local support in certain area of Iraq. They are also becoming far more sohphisticated and lethal in the their tactics and tools. At the current rate, Iraqi security forces are not coming online in significant enough quantities to make any difference.
So again, where is the inevitabity?
where you got your estimate I can't answer for it. The 230,000 number is about 4 fold any other estimate but if you look long enough you can probably find one in the millions.
The fact is that if the insurgency is limited to the 20% Sunnis it is doomed by the other 80% not participating.
Let's see. 160,000 US troops. 25,000 Coalition troops. 100,000 Peshmerga, 210,000 Iraqi Army and police. No internatinonal sanctuary for training and equipping. No international patron to supply them with money or arms or make their case. Sunni political parties forming. So yes, inevitable.
They are also becoming far more sohphisticated and lethal in the their tactics and tools.
Really? Nice nebulous toss away line.
At the current rate, Iraqi security forces are not coming online in significant enough quantities to make any difference.
Silly. First there are no areas of Iraq where the insurgents openly control. Second, the insurgency only exists in parts of 4 provinces so it is hardly widespread. You may not think 210,000 on duty with more coming online each week, but I do.
tactics and sophistication has to do with the use and design of IED's, which cause the great majority of American fatalities. At first they were pretty crude. More recently they've become much more powerful, they've incorporated armor piercing design, and they are being deplyed in a more spophisticated fashion which makes them harder to detect. This is well documented.
If I'm not mistaken we have never reached 160,000 in troop deployment and we are having difficulty maintaining what we do have.
The 210,000 figure (Iraqi forces) was refuted by military commanders in sworn testimony in front of Congress, its much closer to 35,000. Very little progress has been made in bringing Iraqi forces online.
Even the US army has repeatedly said that controlling an insurgency is extremely difficult, historically such an effort has rarely succeeded and on average it takes at least 10 years or longer.
True, most of the problem is in the Sunni provinces, always has been, the Kurds and Shiites were pleased by American entry all along. Among Sunnis, a 20% participation level is pretty high and its reasonable to assume that among those not participating, there is a high level of sypathy and passive support even if its not active.
As for areas not being in control, that's a hard one to say. There are certainly areas where coaltion foreces are not in control either. Its clear what's happening is coaltion forces go in and retake an area in an aggressive action, but there is insufficint manpower to permanently occupy these areas so as soon as they leave the problem re-emerges.
Bottom line - "inevitability" is an act of faith because there is not much in the on the ground facts that genuinely supports that. It may happen, but there is nothing inevitable about it.
I remember such things being said 'as gospel' and my foggy memory of it would be it was spun around the talk radio circuit.
- Not well documented at all as a trend. The alleged Iranian manufactured shape charges have only been used against the Brits and I believe only once. In the US sector about 80% are detected and the increased lethality is due to their increased size. The size increase was brought on by our increased use of armor. At the same time they are no longer detonated by cellphone but must be detonated by direct pulse from a power source which results in more of the bombers being caught. And as a matter if technical note, the "armor piercing design" ,aka Munro Effect, is used by the RPG as well as WW II bazookas so it isn't like this is a quantum leap in technology. We can talk more technical details on this if you want.
- You are mistaken on both counts. Good agitprop but not true.
- Not true in the least. The only thing "refuted" was in a squabble over the number of category 1 (capable of leading the fight) and category 2 (capable of fighting alongside) units. DOD posts the number every Friday. Right now nearly all of Baghdad is under control of Iraqi forces as well as the key cities of Najaf and Karbala. Full details from the guy responsible here.
- So what? That statement may be true but I don't see what it means in the big scheme of things. Without Iraqis outside the Sunni being attracted to the insurgency, it can't grow and it can't spread. It is, right now, at its apex. As the face of the security forces becomes, as it is, Iraqi it will be harder and harder to keep that passive support. Histoically, passive support for insurgencies turns negative once the insurgents are perceived as a losing bet.
- Not true. The only area that has ever been arguably off limits the Coaliton was Falluja between April and November 2004. Your assertion about the reappearance was frequently true 6 months ago. Presently, when cities are cleared they get a permanent Iraqi army/police presence.
- True, if Ted Kennedy and John Murtha get their way. Otherwise, it is inevitable. In fact, without a patron to help them out insurgents are either eliminated or reduced to a nagging police problem like the IRA and ETA.
- We can agree on the fact that IED's are becoming more lethal; as to why, there seems to be some difference of opinion. Certainly increased size is one reason. No matter how you cut it, American daily fatality rates since the beginning of October have been among the highest since we've been there. In fact, only three months have been higher including the first month of the war.
- Current (American) troop strength is roughly 140,000, it peaked around 155,000 shortly before elections. Part of the way current levels are maintained is by extending National Gaurd tours of duty etc. suggesting that its not easy to keep that level. How long can that go on?
- Yes, there are differences of opinion about Iraqi forces, but even US military sources agree that getting Iraqi forces online and fuctional is moving very slow.
- The insurgency is largely a Sunni homegrown thing. Outside participation has been relatively small (less than 10%). Yet it continues. In discussing the effectiveness of establishing Iraqi forces you really have to look a the Sunni areas. No one disputes that Iraqi foreces in Kurdish and Shiite areas are gaining indpendent control. But its highly unlikely that Sunni areas can effectivley be policed with Shiite or Kurdish personell. The Sunni areas have always been the heart of the problem.
- Agree, few areas are "off limits" - but that's different than having control. Not many would argue that coalition forces are completely in control in Sunni areas.
- Certainly, if withdrawal took place, then "inevitable" as you put it would not happen. The question remains though what happens without withdrawal. The history of the British in Iraq suggests for example that the current state of affairs could continue in Sunni areas for many years. Many argue, including well informed miltitary people, that the only way to change that is to dramatically increase US troop levels. Is that realistic? And given falling public suppport for the war, how long can the current troop committment and current casualty leveles be maintained? Its a legtimate question.
- You are right on fatalities. If you look as casualties - which includes wounded - you're nowhere close. I've said several times casualties don't tell you anything about a war other than the number of causalties.
- The number is about 160,000, from a source you'll find credible. It's going to stay at 160K until sometime after the December elections. I don't know what you mean by "extending National Gaurd tours of duty" Guardsmen are statutorily limited to how much active duty they can pull. At 160K we can do a year. At 120K we can go indefinitely from a military standpoint with troops pulling one year in Iraq and three stateside.
- There really aren't differences between people who are familiar with the subject. Getting units on line is slow. But as they say, you want it bad you get it bad. You don't want to just start throwing people in uniform and sending them into battle. There are immense cultural problems in bringing any Arab force up to acceptable western standards. Jordan probably stands alone in having done so. But by taking the time to do it right, we are creating a very good army in Iraq.
- Agree that the Sunni are the heart of the problem but disagree that Kurds and Shia can't police the areas. Predominantly Kurdish units are in Mosul and Baghdad. The Euphrates Valley is being policed by predominantly Shi'a forces. The Sunni really don't have much of a vote in this and they are on the verge of losing what vote remains.
- The same can be said of East St. Louis, East of the Anacostia in DC, and large swaths of East LA. Not many would argue the police are in control there. But I'm not sure what difference that makes in the macro because the major population centers in the Sunni triangle will be under tight control.
- I don't know what the British experience in Iraq really tells us about much of anything... as is the case with most analogies. I have never heard an informed, or even ill-informed, military person say there is a need for more US troops. John Abizaid has said just the opposite. There may be a need for more troops and it will be filled by Iraqi troops.
No, I don't find that a credible source at all for obvious reasons. Citation is a year old and prior to the pre-election buildup which did take tropp levels to roughly 155,000 but sice that time trooop levels have dropped to reoughly 140,000.
On the issue of make-up of Iraqi police/military - if a situation is created where the only way security is approached in Sunni areas is with Kurdish/Shiite personell, the stage is being set for civil war. Succcess in the Sunni areas will come only when Sunni's are willing to police themselves. We're nowhere close to that yet.
I'll retract my commnets about troop strength. Rumsfeld said 159,000 and that I find a credible source.
I have been arguing for a long time that the insurgency consists almost exclusively of Iraqis, citing reports from our own military that "foreign fighters" make up less than 5% of the insurgency, and possibly much less.
All of a sudden the Right agrees with me, but it somehow serves to prove they are right about everything? Maybe so, but my initial reaction is bafflement.
Let's take a look at those conclusions again:
If all of these things are true, then our continued presence in Iraq is vital to US national interests... how?
I'm honestly confused here. The idea that Iraq is the central front in the War on Terror and the idea that we are almost exclusively fighting Ba'athists and criminal elements, rather than al-Qaeda, don't seem to mesh very well.