Posted on 05/27/2008 3:33:52 PM PDT by Dawnsblood
Al Qaeda web sites are making a lot of noise about "why we lost in Iraq." Western intelligence agencies are fascinated by the statistics being posted in several of these Arab language sites. Not the kind of stuff you read about in the Western media. According to al Qaeda, their collapse in Iraq was steep and catastrophic. According to their stats, in late 2006, al Qaeda was responsible for 60 percent of the terrorist attacks, and nearly all the ones that involved killing a lot of civilians. The rest of the violence was carried out by Iraqi Sunni Arab groups, who were trying in vain to scare the Americans out of the country.
Today, al Qaeda has been shattered, with most of its leadership and foot soldiers dead, captured or moved from Iraq. As a result, al Qaeda attacks have declined more than 90 percent. Worse, most of their Iraqi Sunni Arab allies have turned on them, or simply quit. This "betrayal" is handled carefully on the terrorist web sites, for it is seen as both shameful, and perhaps recoverable.
This defeat was not as sudden as it appeared to be, and some Islamic terrorist web sites have been discussing the problem for several years. The primary cause has been Moslems killed as a side effect of attacks on infidel troops, Iraqi security forces and non-Sunnis. Al Qaeda plays down the impact of this, calling the Moslem victims "involuntary martyrs." But that's a minority opinion. Most Moslems, and many other Islamic terrorists, see this as a surefire way to turn the Moslem population against the Islamic radicals. That's what happened earlier in Algeria, Afghanistan, Egypt and many other places. It's really got nothing to do with religion. The phenomenon hits non-Islamic terrorists as well (like the Irish IRA and the Basque ETA).
The senior al Qaeda leadership saw the problem, and tried to convince the "Al Qaeda In Iraq" leadership to cool it. That didn't work. As early as 2004, some Sunni Arabs were turning on al Qaeda because of the "involuntary martyrs" problem. The many dead Shia Arab civilians led to a major terror campaign by the Shia majority. They controlled the government, had the Americans covering their backs, and soon half the Sunni Arab population were refugees.
Meanwhile, the "Al Qaeda In Iraq" leadership was out of control. Most of these guys are really out there, at least in terms of fanaticism and extremism. This led to another fatal error. They declared the establishment of the "Islamic State of Iraq" in late 2006. This was an act of bravado, and touted as the first step in the re-establishment of the caliphate (a global Islamic state, ruled over by God's representative on earth, the caliph.) The caliphate has been a fiction for over a thousand years. Early on, the Islamic world was split by ethnic and national differences, and the first caliphate fell apart after a few centuries. Various rulers have claimed the title over the centuries, but since 1924, when the Turks gave it up (after four centuries), no one of any stature has taken it up. So when al Qaeda "elected" a nobody as the emir of the "Islamic State of Iraq", and talked about this being the foundation of the new caliphate, even many pro-al Qaeda Moslems were aghast. When al Qaeda could not, in 2007, exercise any real control over the parts of Iraq they claimed as part of the new Islamic State, it was the last straw. The key supporters, battered by increasingly effective American and Iraqi attacks, dropped their support for al Qaeda, and the terrorist organization got stomped to bits by the "surge offensive" of last year. The final insult was delivered by the former Iraqi Sunni Arab allies, who quickly switched sides, and sometimes even worked with the Americans (more so than the Shia dominated Iraqi security forces) to hunt down and kill al Qaeda operators.
If you can read Arabic, you can easily find these pro-terrorism sites, and see for yourself how al Qaeda is trying to explain its own destruction to its remaining supporters. While it's common to assume the Information War has been going against the West, this was not the case when you checked with what was going on inside the enemy camp.
This should go directly to Reid. But, of course, he’d never read it.
re: “arrested, exiled, or hanged”
Why can’t they be arrested, exiled, AND then hanged? :^)
It would be wonderful to hang some of our domestic traitors after taking them over to Europe, just to get the left (there and here) bleating more frantically....... public hangings in Trafalgar Square and at L’Arc de Triomphe....
[I know, I know, can’t be done, too bad, missed opportunities to deal with traitors properly.......]
Pinging jveritas!
Some good news in Arabic . . .
Here’s the quote from the article:
“If you can read Arabic, you can easily find these pro-terrorism sites, and see for yourself how al Qaeda is trying to explain its own destruction to its remaining supporters. While it’s common to assume the Information War has been going against the West, this was not the case when you checked with what was going on inside the enemy camp.”
Al Qaeda in Iraq has been utterly defeated.
God bless our brave troops and President Bush.
Exactly.
This is great news. The first part of the War on Terror is now going our way. Hopefully, it will continue. Gen.Petraeus deserves as much credit as Eisenhower.
I would like to see some freeper attorneys conduct a mock trial for treason against numerous big name dems right here on free Republic. Bring the charges against them, project what the testimony might be and sentence them. It would be a piece of fiction, but solidly based on facts. In the sentencing, comparisons could be made between their traitorous acts and those of others who were actually convicted of treason during past wars.
Al Qaeda lost Iraq last summer.
Thanks for the ping, SV. There’s a way to go but thus far we have denied the terrorists control over Iraq’s vast oil reserves, isolated Syria from Iran and left the mark of human kindness on countless numbers of Iraqi children.
"Involuntary martyrs." Sheesh, that's the most pathetic euphemism ever.
Thanks Ernest.
Iraqis losing patience with militiamen
(Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia has provided services but...)
Los Angeles Times | May 27, 2008 | Tina Susman and Usama Redha
Posted on 05/27/2008 2:25:18 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2022090/posts
BOOM
I want the real thing!
#50 Very interesting. Thanks for the ping and thanks to Valin.
A great read.
I can assure you that in WWII news of this sort would not have been absent from American newspapers and radio broadcasts (it would have been on the front page with banner headlines) - but that was before societal and corresponding media changes, beginning in the 1970’s, led to the death of media professionalism and the honest seeking of truth in a truly free press.
> If you can read Arabic, you can easily find these pro-terrorism sites, and see for yourself how al Qaeda is trying to explain its own destruction to its remaining supporters.
And if you can’t read Arabic, use the Google translator. It is excellent, and provides a good gist of what is being said.
Go Troops!
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