Al-Qaeda presence in Iraq is overblown

In the vast and constantly shifting reasons why we must remain in Iraq, the old reliable standard that gets most of the play is that if we were to leave, Al-Qaeda would take over Iraq and make it a base.

The second most-employed 'reason' is that we have to stabilise the government of Iraq so that it can be "a strong ally in the War On Terror". This reason is slowly being abandoned, at least in practise, by betting everything on the "Awakening". By building a parallel military force that is not loyal to the Iraqi government, the Administration is effectively throwing the government, the National Police, and the Iraqi Army to the wolves. The idea seems to be that they can control the Sahwa more easily, rout Al-Qaeda, and then manipulate them into bringing the Iraqi government 'into line' or even overthrowing them in favour of a more puppet-like regime.

While there are a lot of problems with this approach, a stupid, risky, and expensive plan has never stopped the Administration before. But the premise of this scheme, the rout of Al-Qaeda, is profoundly weak. As John Cole notes in the post below, there are no more than a few hundred AQ. Nearly every day, the military posthumously dubs any number of corpses "Al-Qaeda". Basically, we 'know' they are AQ because we killed them, and we wouldn't have killed them unless they were AQ, or so the circular logic goes. Our "Awakening" buddies that have been killed by friendly fire have even been dubbed AQ until this little "mixup" was corrected later by the Sahwa.

In the post below, Mr. Cole is taking McCain to task over his utterly mistaken attack on Obama when he responded to a hypothetical scenario. McCain falls over himself in a knee-jerk reaction in which he adamantly speaks of a tremendous Al-Qaeda threat in Iraq.

post from John Cole's Informed Comment:

Moreover, the allegation that he makes about there being 'al-Qaeda in Iraq' that could well take over the country is part lie and part insanity. The Sunni Arabs are no more than 20% of the Iraqi population. How could a tiny minority from within them take over the whole?

The technical definition of al-Qaeda is operatives who have sworn fealty to Usama bin Laden. There were only a few hundred of them. I doubt whether more than a handful of such individuals are in Iraq.

So there isn't any "al-Qaeda" in Iraq in the technical sense. There are "Excommunicating Holy Warriors" (Takfiri Jihadis), i.e. devotees of political Islam who are violent and willing to deploy terror for political purposes. They declare other Muslims who disagree with them "not Muslims,"-- thus the "excommunicating" bit. But there are only a few hundred foreign fighters. A small minority of Iraqis has associated with them. They don't call themselves 'al-Qaeda in Iraq.' The major such group is "The Islamic State of Iraq." And to say that they have "bases" in Iraq is pretty grandiose. They have some safe houses and try to take and hold neighborhoods, so far with indifferent success.

The idea that this small minority of violent Muslim fundamentalists could take over Iraq is completely crazy. They haven't even been able to keep their toehold in Baghdad-- the Sunnis have been largely ethnically cleansed from the capital by Shiite militias.

So the Shiites would not allow an "al-Qaeda" takeover of Iraq. Neither would the Kurds. Nor would most Sunni Arabs (as in al-Anbar Province, where the Dulaim tribe is at daggers drawn with the Excommunicating Holy Warriors).

Moreover, the neighbors would not allow the radical Sunnis to take over. Iran would sit on its hands while Shiites were massacred in Baghdad? Secular Turkey would allow this development? Baathist Syria? Hashemite Jordan (which played a major role in tracking down and killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi)?

McCain's assertions that "al-Qaeda" has a strong position in Iraq or has any chance of taking over the country if the US leaves are both inaccurate. One is an error, the other is a dark but insubstantial fantasy.

Obama replied:

'“I've got some news for John McCain, that is there was no such thing Al Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade.

“I've got some news for John McCain. I've got some news for John McCain. He took us into a war, along with George Bush that should have never been authorized, never been waged. They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 and that would be Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, that is stronger now than at any time since 2001. I've been paying attention John McCain!

“John McCain may like to say that he wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of Hell. But so far all he's done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq that's cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars and that I intend to bring to an end so that we can actually start going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and in the hills of Pakistan, like we should have been doing in the first place. That's the news John McCain! '

Obama is correct that there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before Bush overthrew the Iraqi government. I haven't been able to get anyone interested in it, but there is proof positive that the Baath authorities were very scared of al-Qaeda and that when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi showed up in Iraq, they put out an APB on him and branded him dangerous. (Dick Cheney told fairy tales about how Zarqawi was put up in fancy hotels by a solicitous Saddam.)

This is something that has always irked me about the neocon claims. This is the primary "link" used by wingnuts to tie Saddam to 9/11. Al-Zarqawi was in Iraq, so Al-Qaeda was allied with Saddam.
Hell, Al-Qaeda operatives were in the U.S, Britain, Spain, etc. Does that 'tie' the U.S. to Al-Qaeda? Does that mean we should invade Spain as "payback for 9/11"? Aren't we obligated to invade Britain, a country known to have WMD, to prevent it from being used by Al-Qaeda as a base?

The likely answer, if neocons were honest, to these questions is "only if the Decider says we need to".

Fox says Iraqi troops not loyal to al-Maliki

Note the quote from (Rear Adm.) Fox (in bold) about how the Iraqi police and military are not loyal to the al-Maliki government.
Note that almost half of the "foreign insurgents" in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia. The Decider wants us to think the Iranians are the bad guys.
Note another car bomb in Baghdad, where the surge is strongest and where people are supposedly in love with U.S. troops.
Note once-peaceful Kurdistan is now becoming a target of Al-Qaeda. The right-wing who adore Petraeus should remember his "balloon analogy" and realise that putting pressure in one area only moves the problem to another area.
Note the "US commanders" say the Iraqi police are "often" infilitrated by Shiite militias.

These are all facts from Iraqi officials or US commanders, not the "liberal media".

From the Daily Star

Iraq announces it is holding more than 2,000 foreign suspects

Compiled by Daily Star staff
Monday, July 16, 2007

A top Iraqi official said Sunday Baghdad supports Saudi efforts to prevent cross-border infiltrations while the Interior Ministry announced having detained over 2,000 foreign suspects. In another day of violence, at least 25 Iraqis were killed in separate attacks.

In an interview with the Saudi Okaz newspaper, Iraqi National Security Adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie said that security in the region is inseparable from that of Iraq's.

"Whatever threatens neighboring countries, namely Saudi Arabia, constitutes a direct threat against Iraq," he said in comments carried out by the Kuwaiti official news agency. He said Iraq and Saudi Arabia face the same goal of fighting terrorism, adding that both governments have agreed to establish a "security fence" to prevent cross-border smuggling of arms and drugs and the infiltration of militants, he said.

Rubaie was part of a delegation of senior Iraqi security, defense and diplomatic officials who visited Saudi Arabia last week to seek increased cooperation in dealing with terrorism.

The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that 45 percent of all foreign militants targeting US troops and Iraqi security forces were from Saudi Arabia, 15 percent from Syria and Lebanon, and 10 percent from North Africa, according to an unidentified senior US military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.

Fighters from Saudi Arabia are thought to have carried out more suicide bombings than those of any other nationality, the paper said.

Rubaie said about 160 Saudi militants have been tried in Iraq for taking part in its insurgency while hundreds of others are in detention.

"There are hundreds of Saudis in Iraq. Many were killed in suicide attacks," he said, claiming that foreign militants infiltrate Iraq "from a neighboring country," in an apparent reference to Syria.

"Many returned home after undergoing training on violence in Iraq, posing a threat to the kingdom's security," he said.

Meanwhile, the head of the National Command Center at the Interior Ministry, Major General Abdel-Karim Khalaf, said Iraqi authorities have recently arrested 2,489 suspected terrorists, mostly from Iran, Egypt and Afghanistan, KUNA reported. He did not specify the period the arrests were made.

He reporters that among those still being questioned, "11 were Jordanians; 64 Syrians; nine Saudis; two Algerians; six Moroccans; six Yemenis; two Libyans; 57 Palestinians; 284 Egyptians; 113 Sudanese, two Emiratis; three Lebanese and one Somali."

He added that the suspects included 461 from Iran and others came from Kenya, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Britain, France, Holland, Tanzania, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Meanwhile, 10 people were killed by a car bomb in central Baghdad, Iraqi police said.

Twenty-five people were wounded by the blast which ripped through shops and restaurants near Hussein Square in Baghdad's mainly Shiite Jadriyya district. Two women were among the dead.

In other violence, seven Kurdish guards were killed near the Iranian border in normally calm northern Iraq, in an attack police and a local official blamed on Al-Qaeda-linked militants.

US commanders warn that Iraqi forces are not ready to handle security alone, in part due to tensions between ordinary Iraqis and police, who the United States says have often been infiltrated by Shiite militia.

"There is a certain element of the Iraqi security forces and in particular the Iraqi police ... that have had shortfalls in terms of loyalty ... to the central government," Rear Admiral Mark Fox, the top military spokesman in Iraq, told a news conference.

A wide-ranging British report by the Iraq Commission, released Saturday evening, recommended the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq once Iraqi forces have been trained, regardless of the security situation.

Its central recommendation was for Britain to "preserve and underpin" the territorial integrity of Iraq, promote regional engagement in its reconstruction and prevent Al-Qaeda using it as a base to launch attacks.

It also urged British Premier Gordon Brown to work more with the UN and Iraq's neighbors to support and promote the country's reconstruction and build up its state infrastructure.

Maliki said Saturday that Iraqi security forces were ready to take over from the Americans at "any time," but also stressed they needed more training.

Iraq's top military spokesman, Brigadier General Qassem Atta, said at the news conference with Fox that Maliki's remark was supposed to be a "general" observation. - Agencies

Bush misses the point, loses credibility

Judging by the questioning at Bush's recent "benchmark" press conference, nobody in the media believes he has any credibility anymore. Right-wing blogs seize on this as "liberal media bias". Yeah, it's the same "liberal media" that silently and uncritically passed along every distortion from the White House for the past four years. He might as well just bring a parrot that squawks "Al-Qaeda! Al-Qaeda!" as try to run through the same old material.
His obssession with Al-Qaeda has grown tired. He keeps repeating a standard one-note tune that can be summarised as "Al-Qaeda is bad!" Yeah, we all know Al-Qaeda is bad, Mr. Bush. Nobody's arguing with you there. This occupation was supposed to be about getting the Iraqi military up and running, standing on it's own. It also was supposed to be about stabilising the political situation and getting an Iraqi government solid enough to, maybe, have a quorum. The best way to get rid of Al-Qaeda from Iraq is to have an effective Iraqi military and an effective Iraqi government, not a few dozen armed militias and provinces looking out for themselves. Instead, it's become an Al-Qaeda manhunt, while the military and government continue to be as feeble and impotent as ever. To those who do support Al-Qaeda (hint: it's not the American public) this just makes Al-Qaeda look strong.
"Al-Qaeda is bad" simply does not translate into "endless occupation of a failed state at a cost of $2 billion a week" in the minds of the public. "Al-Qaeda is bad" does not correlate with " we accept your continuing smiley pronouncements" or "we believe whatever your ventriloquist dummies say" to the vast majority of the American people.
He also continues to hammer away on his desire to "listen to the commanders on the ground", when everyone knows what happened to Shinseki when he stopped telling the Decider good news. If Petraeus were to come out publicly and say "The Iraqi military and government are hopeless basket cases, and nothing will truly turn around until that changes", then we'd see a new "commander on the ground" in a week. The new guy would be a hand-picked toady ready and eager to parrot exactly what he's told. Bush would then continue to "listen to his commanders on the ground", as they would say exactly what he wants to hear. Petraeus knows what would happen to his men under those circumstances, so he plays the game.
Ironically, when the surge is finally admitted to be a failure, it wil be Petraeus who will take the fall. Be sure to watch for Republicans, Fox News pundits, and right-wing blogs to turn on the man who they so eagerly rely on for every bit of positive spin when this happens.
Even if Petraeus succeeds in expelling Al-Qaeda from Iraq, Iraq will still look more like Somalia for a long time to come. How can any sane person say that would be worth a trillion dollars and 4000 servicemen's lives? The public sees this, and all of Bush's crowing about how bad Al-Qaeda is won't change this. When the Shiite government of Al-Maliki tries to extend it's control over the "success" of Sunni Anbar province, the Sunni gangs that we backed will tear the Iraqi forces to shreds. The White House will simply pull a new scapegoat out of the hat in this case.
For the moment Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran are waiting on the sidelines to intervene in their own interests. What will happen when they decide it's time to make their move? Screeching about Al-Qaeda won't help then. The Republicans and right-wing media, who so loudly profess concern about innocent Iraqis, will simply shrug and let the next President deal with it.
By equating critics of the occupation with supporters of Al-Qaeda, Bush has made a serious error. Polls have shown that the public does not buy his Iraqi Central Front thesis, nor his "fight them there" slogan. Even someone with low intelligence can figure out that nothing is preventing Al-Qaeda from attacking us right now, regardless of how many troops we have in Iraq. Informed people know that Al-Qaeda wasn't even in Iraq until after we invaded. Disillusionment with the occupation is so strong that even war supporters would have a hard time believing that friends, family, co-workers, etc. are actually supporters of Al-Qaeda when they dissent.
The truth is, Bush stopped talking to the American public years ago. His speeches are now exclusively geared to the 20% who will support him no matter what. As this 20% sputters in rage at reporters disrespectful enough to actually question the Decider's credibility, Republicans facing re-election will have to admit, at least to themselves, that this 20% can't save them and are just a millstone around their neck.
Just like the three protesters who denounced Hinduism as "wicked" and "an abomination", this 20% are really just hate-filled bigots who care little for democracy, much less the facts.