Admiral Smith had a pretty solid news conference yesterday that highlighted all the brutality and twisted logic of Al-Qaeda in Iraq for 2007. Unless you are one of the 20 people that subscribes to the Pentagon Channel, you probably didn't catch it, but the transcript and graphs are up on the MNF-I website for your perusal and analysis. The Admiral talked extensively about Al-Qaeda in Iraq, while the group is mostly Iraqis, it is led by foreigners and the suicide attacks are conducted by primarily foreigners (mostly Saudis BTW). While us Americans have been fortunate to not have a serious Al-Qaeda attack on American soil since 9/11, the Iraqis haven't been:
These bombings were just two of the more than 4,500 attacks by al-Qaeda Iraq in 2007 that targeted civilians. Al-Qaeda murdered 3,870 Iraqis, injuring nearly 18,000 additional innocent civilians. The violence peaked in March and April and as the surge of operations pressed through the summer, the number of high profile explosions slowly began to decrease, however the numbers still remain alarmingly high.
Just so you don't think I'm some public relations schill masquerading as a LT with a lousy attitude, I will say that the Al-Qaeda in Iraq wasn't really around before the 2003 invasion, and connections with Saddam are a little far-fetched. But now that they are here conducting this campaign of brutality (read the story about the teenaged suicide bomber in Fallujah), we pretty much owe it to the world to exterminate them. Methods of accomplishing that can be debated extensively.
The Sinjar truck bombings in August '07 killed 100s of minority Yazidis, but got little American media attention
See what the others have said:
2 comments:
Hey, LT Nixon, this may be a naive question. If AQ in Iraq didn't really exist until the invasion, then, obviously it came for us. If we were to leave, what's to say AQ wouldn't leave also? I'm not so naive as to believe it would disband, and I'm sure we'll be seeing it in Afghanistan if we ever get back there in full force, but what would keep it in Iraq if we were to leave?
PS -- I think my post over at VV (the Ron Paul thing) got somebody upset. Not at me -- at YOU! i was just joshing with you, I'm sure you knew. But somebody thinks I was serious. not taking any blame, though. you know very well the Ron Paul folks have built-in radar that tracks anywhere on the internet where Ron Paul's name is mentioned. you brought it on yourself.
From now on, no more mention of the name. We'll simply call it the "R" word.
I think AQI came to establish caliphate in Iraq taking advantage of the instability shortly after the invasion. If you look at who they are targeting, it's mostly civilians, awakening council members, and Iraqi security forces. They'd probably try to set up shop even more so if we left. They represent a rationale that is incompatible with civilization and seeks to destroy it (like nazis, stalin's communism, cultural revolution) so that's my justification for pressing on to some degree. Would the jihadists have gone to A-stan if we never went into Iraq, yeah probably. And they are already in Pakistan. But that's just my lousy opinion.
Yeah the Paul bots were in full effect. haha, I like how it was a total generic comment that the guy posted, he could have at least read the damn post, sheesh.
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