The top U.S. military intelligence officer in Iraq said Abu Musab Zarqawi and his foreign and Iraqi associates have essentially commandeered the insurgency, becoming the dominant opposition force and the greatest immediate threat to U.S. objectives in the country.Really...this is news to somebody? I thought everybody was on the same page on this one a long time ago...
The remarks underscored a shift in view among senior members of the U.S. military command here since the spring, as violence, especially against civilians, has spiked and as Zarqawi, a radical Sunni Muslim from Jordan, has aggressively promoted himself and his anti-U.S., anti-Shiite campaign. U.S. military leaders say they now see Zarqawi's group of foreign fighters and Iraqi supporters, known as al Qaeda in Iraq, as having supplanted Iraqis loyal to ousted president Saddam Hussein as the insurgency's driving element.If our senior military commanders are only just now coming to this conclusion, then they haven't been paying attention. And I'm not buying it...I think these media guys are finalyl getting out of the hotel lobbies a bit and breathing in some fresh air.
Even with Zarqawi's growing significance, Zahner and other officers stressed that Iraq's insurgency remains a complex mix of elements. It includes a variety of factions, often with differing political, religious or tribal aims and sometimes with simply criminal intentions.Something tells me that the general isn't talking to me but rather the reporter......
"While Zarqawi is the overarching bad guy -- the one everyone loves to hate -- there are a lot of other bad guys operating as well," said Brig. Gen. Karl R. Horst, deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, which has responsibility for the Baghdad area.
But the Hussein loyalists -- including former Baath Party members, onetime military and intelligence officers and other Sunni Arab associates of the ousted Iraqi leader -- have clearly receded in the U.S. command's view. Labeled "Saddamists" in U.S. military reports, they are now considered less an immediate military danger than a longer-term political concern, given their desire to return to power and their potential to infiltrate and subvert efforts to establish democracy. Once the primary names on the list of most-wanted insurgents in Iraq, they now rank behind those identified with al Qaeda in Iraq.I can't imagine Baathists buying that whole 72 virgins thing...
"You'll see some of the old regime elements on there, mainly just to maintain pressure and, frankly, accountability," Zahner said. "But when you look at those individuals central to the inflicting of huge amounts of violence, it really is not those folks. The Saddamists, the former regime guys, they're riding this."
By contrast, Zarqawi's network, although numerically still a small fraction of the insurgency, is said to be behind a disproportionately large share of the violence. Its suicide bombings in particular have produced the highest casualties and, senior U.S. officers say, done the most to heighten insecurity and sectarian tensions and undermine public support in the United States for the U.S. military effort here.What are these numbers based on? I've hard that the majority of the terrorists numbers are foreign fighters not Saddam loyalists.
The heightened prominence of Zarqawi's group has affected the focus of U.S. military operations. Since spring, U.S. commanders have moved beyond targeting the group's leaders and urban cells to try to shut off the flow of foreign Islamic extremists infiltrating from Syria. These foreigners, who come from a number of countries, are said to be employed by Zarqawi as the primary suicide attackers in Iraq.I suppose that if the senior military leadership is only just now figuring out that foreigners are the problem, that would explain why it took so long for the Iraqis to decide to close the Syrian border. Wow, is our military leadership that incompetent? I find it hard to believe.
...Emphasis added.
More than 315 foreign fighters have been killed since March and nearly 330 detained. Suicide attacks fell about 50 percent from May to August.
Some good news...and look, it was buried in the article...
