This one comes courtesy of team member Trent Telenko, who has no web access at the moment but can email us. It concerns some conversations he's been having with reader Tom Holsinger. Are we fighting Saddam's troops in Iraq - or something else? Trent writes:
"Tom suspects our opposition in Iraq are foreign Al Qaeda terrorists and not local Fedayeen. Their suicidal attacks on our forces, and the well publicized murders of our POWs are classic Al Qaeda Modus Operandi. Tom feels the capture of our POWs may have been done by Iraqi forces, but that Al Qaeda offered a reward for the capture and filmed the murders. They likely did the murders themselves.In Tom's own words:Saddam's loyalists are bullies and not fanatics. They are cruel cowards."
"We are not fighting Iraqis. We are fighting Al Qaeda now armed with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The continued operation of the Baghdad International Airport and other undisturbed egress has allowed Al Qaeda who want to leave with WMD to do so.Trent continues:The ones who are left don't intend to leave. They intend to stay, fight and die. And they don't give a rip for Iraqi civilian casualties."
"What Tom said in his column about stopping America from building a successful democracy in Iraq [...that] is an Al Qaeda objective. Killing scores or hundred of thousands of Iraqis, and contaminating vast areas, will do just that.Something to ponder, especially in light of updates like this one from Junkyard Blog, and this article from Laurie Mylroie.Tom is most terrified though of Al Qaeda use of Iraqi anthrax powders in New York subways -- a scenario tested by the US Army in the 1960s. "If anthrax is used in Iraq, it will be used on the USA."
And easy and eager access to al jazeera.
Joe,
Franks acts as though he doesn't know the reason we are conquering Iraq.
The key issues here are the related command failures that not taking out Iraqi TV and not having as a campaign objective egress prevention represent.
We are engaging in a preventive war who's objective is to remove the threat of WMD to our homeland. By not making egress prevention a top priority of the war plan, Franks has allowed Al Qaeda to escape with WMD via the Baghdad International airport. The 36 hour window between the decapitation strike and the commensement of general hostilities is particularly damning here.
Those Al Qaeda that want to leave Iraq have left.
Those who are left are those who want to fight and die killing Americans. And they don't care how many Iraqis they snuff in the process with appropriated Iraqi WMD.
The American POW snuff video was pure Al Qaeda, as is the M.O. of the so-called Fedayeen. At this point I'd lay money that Tom is right and the 'Saddam Fedayeen' are foreign Al Qaeda terrorists. Tom's point about Saddam's bully boys being 'cruel cowards' and not 'suicidal fanatics' is spot on here.
"Shock and Awe" failed precisely because our weapons were so accurate. We have divorced the moral impact of war from wider society because we have so divorced collateral damage from the destructive effects of our weapons. Those who are going to fight us are either dead or avoiding our targeting. Everyone else can 'safely' ignore the war. For "Shock and Awe" to have worked with the Iraqi peoples, collateral damage was a feature, not a bug.
(This is an institutional failure as much as a command failure. Too many military officers get devoted too particular weapons systems, or doctrines, to pay attention to how people act in reality and not their careerist fantasies.)
Now that the American POW videos are out. Those of our enemies who are not dead are heartened. Those videos feed their 'Arab Fantasy Ideology' of beating the American Superpower like they beat the Russians Superpower.
In addition, those who might support us in Iraq to save themselves will now just hunker down some more.
David Warren seems to confirm an al-Qaeda presence in these battles.
It makes sense to me though I doubt they've taken over the regime as they did the Taliban, dead Saddam or not.
They're just being used as terrorist cannon-fodder, which fits both their purposes and Saddam's. They could never usurp control from the Ba'ath Party.