For four days this month, U.S. Marines were onlookers at just the kind of fight they had hoped to see: a battle between suspected followers of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a foreign-born insurgent, and Iraqi Sunni tribal fighters at the western frontier town of Husaybah.
In clashes sparked by the assassination of a tribal sheik, which was commissioned by Zarqawi, the foreign insurgents and the Iraqi tribal fighters pounded one another with small weapons and mortars in the town's streets as the U.S. military watched from a distance, tribal members and the U.S. military said. ...
The Sunni Arab tribe involved in the clashes, the Sulaiman, lost four men, Salman Reesha Sulaiman, a member of the tribe, said in an interview after the fighting, which occurred during the first week of May.
On the Zarqawi side, 11 foreign fighters were killed outright, plus an unknown number of other foreign fighters and their Iraqi allies in U.S. bombing runs after local tribes tipped off their location to the Americans.
The fighting at Husaybah was a dramatic sign of the fractures in support and allegiance the foreign fighters are experiencing, several Iraqi political leaders and other Iraqis said. The battles also revealed what appeared to be fissures within the network's top leadership, they said.
Yes, that's right, Sunnis are joining the fight against the foreign invader Zarqawi. Yep, turns out they aren't joining al Queda en masse. Turns out the mass media was wrong about some of the village leaders/warlords. Captain Ed continues:
The fighting started when the local tribal sheikh invited the Marines to a goodwill lunch to promote good relations between his tribe and the Americans. Zarqawi ordered him assassinated for the crime of collaboration, and proudly took credit for the murder after it occurred. However, Arabs don't take kindly to the killing of their tribal leaders, even by accident; they won't stand for their deliberate killing, regardless of the reason.
Nor did Zarqawi make his presence in Husaybah particularly popular after the murder. He forced the women to cover themselves from head to toe, and forbade the men from wearing "Western" clothing. Satellite and music stores had to close their doors, and Zarqawi's minions openly bragged about making Husaybah another Fallujah, perhaps forgetting Fallujah's eventual fate.
The arrogance of these people. They vastly underestimate the drive newfound freedom puts in people's hearts, and the desire for self-governance, not foreign rule by some self-styled sultan of the Al-Queda nation of Iraq. I am so glad more Iraqis are joining the battle against these terrorists. That is another thing that frosts me. The MSM continues to call these people insurgents and "foreign fighters." They are terrorists and foreign invaders. They are not insurgents. They are not citizens or natives of Iraq uprising. They are foreigners seeking to promote their will on the new sovereign nation of free Iraq. We are allied with the new government to let Iraqis determine their fate, not the self-styled sultans of al Queda.
One would think the MSM would promote the Sunni uprising against al Queda and call these al-Queda animals by their real name--TERRORISTS!, not insurgents, not foreign fighters, and in the case of Gitmo, not POWs. They are terrorist scum...nuff said.
