Posted on 06/09/2005 5:19:35 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
WASHINGTON - More foreign fighters than ever are crossing Iraq's porous borders to fight U.S. and Iraqi forces, and a growing number are from U.S.-ally Saudi Arabia, a Senate Democrat said Thursday.
"The mix is changing," said Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), D-Del., citing conversations last week in Iraq with Marine and Army generals. "Now, the mix is increasingly more Islamist crossing the border ... and a lot of them are Saudis. It presents a different profile" that is harder for U.S. forces to confront.
Biden, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's top Democrat, gave no specific numbers, for foreign fighters as a whole or for the percentage from Saudi Arabia. He said he was told repeatedly that the totals are going up and that Saudis are "a disproportionate number."
"They kept talking about their belief ... that more in terms of numbers of jihadists are crossing the border, more sophisticatedly trained and more capable of doing harm and damage than existed a month ago, three months ago, five months ago," Biden told reporters.
In the past, the U.S. military has said foreign fighters are a small percentage — perhaps one in 10 — of the insurgents fighting the U.S. presence in Iraq. They do a disproportionate amount of killing, however, in part because they are more likely to carry out suicide bombings.
U.S. and other analysts say the foreign fighters are primarily Islamic jihadists, fighting what they claim are anti-Islamic invaders, while the much larger homegrown, mostly Sunni Arab, insurgency has tended to be motivated more by political grievance and factional rivalry.
Part of the Bush administration strategy in Iraq is to improve living conditions and security for ordinary Iraqis and thereby reduce support for the homegrown insurgency. That calculation won't work with foreign fighters, Biden said.
"If you turn on lights, get the air conditioning running and clean up the sewage, that ain't going to have any impact on the jihadist coming across from Saudi Arabia with a bomb strapped on his stomach," said Biden, who has made five trips to Iraq since U.S. forces overthrew Saddam Hussein a little more than two years ago.
The Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Biden's remarks.
Saudis have been among the foreigners captured by U.S. forces inside Iraq, but the Pentagon and the Bush administration have said little about the national backgrounds of foreign fighters.
Asked about estimates that Saudis make up 40 percent of suicide bombers recruited to Iraq by the Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Saudi Arabia differs from other nations that may export fighters to Iraq because it is also fighting al-Qaida insurgents on its own territory.
"There's no question but that there have been a number of Saudis involved that have been captured throughout the entire activity," Rumsfeld said.
Biden said a U.S. troop pullout now would be disastrous, but he accused the Bush administration of glossing over the magnitude of the problems and underestimating the time it will take to fix them.
"There is a total disconnect from what I've seen ... being on the ground and what I hear when I come back home," Biden said.
"Biden talking out of his ass again."
His statements are wrong how?
Somebody must have finally told Biden that some of the terrorists are from Saudi Arabia. Wait till he finds out that they're also Muslims, and even from the Middle East. Too facts might short-circuit him, though.
Hmm.. I thought that was the point.. draw in the bad guys, keep 'em coming, till we wipe them all out. We knew there were Saudi's, this isn't big news .. maybe to him it is though.. Good strategery.
Biden reveals tomorrow that Sun rises in the East.
Facts cause Dums to have a nervous break down.
Well Shermy, I don't think Senator Kinnock is wrong in his observation that foreigners are coming to fight in Iraq. That's been known for a long time. His oral-anal inversion occurs when he judges the gathering of foreign terrorists to be a bad thing. The better argument is that killing islamofascists in Iraq is much easier and more efficient than hunting them down all over the globe, perhaps including the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Kind of like flypaper for muzzie-scum: lure them in where we have the guns and soldiers, then kill them relatively conveniently.
WAIT!! Is this why they are called INSURGENTS!! OMG! What next! You mean somebody from outside Iraq is fighting against us???
I wonder if he'll notice they aren't wearing uniforms. :)
> His oral-anal inversion occurs when he judges the
> gathering of foreign terrorists to be a bad thing.
For Democrats, it is a "bad thing".
They'd much rather these jihadis were coming here
and sucessfully blowing up soft targets, instead
of stupidly facing our top warriors in Iraq, and
getting tickets to mythical virginland.
"There is a total disconnect from what I've seen ... being on the ground and what I hear when I come back home," Biden said.
I thought he was talking about the US MSM coverage. Silly me.
Letr's kill the bastards in their own neighborhood and clean out the vipers.
Why the sheeple of Delaware continue to put this thing in office has always escaped me - even when I lived there........
How do you know Joe Biden has no idea what he's talking about? When his lips are moving.
Aside from pissing and moaning Joe, what's YOUR solution?? If you don't have one, how about STFU?
"There is a total disconnect from what I've seen ... being on the ground and what I hear when I come back home," Biden said.
So who knows more about "total disconnect" than a liberal democrat?
I don't care where they are from, if they fire on American troops they should be tango uniform pronto.
Oops. Well, just purple my finger! You mean, since the Iraqi election, this whole thing isn't playing like the Vietnam quagmire you were hoping for, Joe?
Hmmm, sounds like its time to beat the old 'nam drum again, huh?
Too bad the Iraqi Gov. and the US are takin' down faster than they can be lined up. AQ is no NVA, Joe.
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