Surely you've seen the videos of the 'youths' shouting "Allahu Ackbar!" as they torched cars parked on Parisian streets. Of course, they could be yelling that simply because they know it intimidates nonMuslims...
see..this is why it is difficult to take you seriously. what has this got to do with the Paris riots?
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But you must also remember that when the original immigration wave occurred, France signed an agreement with Muslim clerics NOT to actively integrate the immigrants into their culture, as this was seen by the clerics as something that could possibly taint their religious piousness...
and?
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But both the out-of-country training and the Algerian Clerics' call for Jihad against France DID in fact occur; you see, either they did or they didn't - it's kinda hard to spin an either/or like that, and these things most definitely DID happen.
this is where you lose it. they are absolutely unrelated. everyone except those who want to spin this into an moslem vs world issue knows that the paris riots have nothing to do with religion.
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Now, whether or not the uprising was preplanned and the unfortunate deaths of the two young men were used as a pretext with which to justify its genesis is another matter entirely...
exactly!!! they are completely unrelated..but you still choose to make the connection because you want to..because you hate moslems..because you think arabs are the evil(hey! i am adopting your lingo)
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I happen to think that police presence was interfering with their underground drug, prostitution and black market merchandise economy, with which they were augmenting their government welfare checks, and they decided to drive the gendarmes out, so that their customers wouldn't feel too self-conscious in front of them to conduct business. However, since the car-burning riots, their former customers refuse to drive in there any more, anyway, so they're screwed either way.
what does this have to do with you trying to implicate islam in the recent paris events?
do you see how you make no sense when you try to 'connect' events in an effort to blame islam and moslems and arabs...you throw in israel/palestine too for some misguided reason.
you are still crazy, man. not going to dignify your blatherings anymore.
Surely you've seen the videos of the 'youths' shouting "Allahu Ackbar!" as they torched cars parked on Parisian streets. Of course, they could be yelling that simply because they know it intimidates nonMuslims...
see..this is why it is difficult to take you seriously. what has this got to do with the Paris riots?
They WERE burning these cars in Paris, and the burning of these cars WAS part of the riots...I should think that part of the riots would ipso facto have to, er, um, ...do with the riots.
Quote:
But you must also remember that when the original immigration wave occurred, France signed an agreement with Muslim clerics NOT to actively integrate the immigrants into their culture, as this was seen by the clerics as something that could possibly taint their religious piousness...
and?
So why should the French be blamed for honoring their deal with the Islamist clerics? They shouldn't be. What they should be blamed for was making the deal in the first place.
Quote:
But both the out-of-country training and the Algerian Clerics' call for Jihad against France DID in fact occur; you see, either they did or they didn't - it's kinda hard to spin an either/or like that, and these things most definitely DID happen.
this is where you lose it. they are absolutely unrelated. everyone except those who want to spin this into an moslem vs world issue knows that the paris riots have nothing to do with religion.
This is not a disputation if the facts which i cite; it is rather your personal opinion, buttressed by an appeal to an unnamed "everyone except", that there is no linkage between the facts I cite and the subsequent riots. I myself do not believe that these prior processes and events were the determining factors in the riots, but no one is in a position to conclude that they had no effect or impact whatsoever.
Quote:
Now, whether or not the uprising was preplanned and the unfortunate deaths of the two young men were used as a pretext with which to justify its genesis is another matter entirely...
exactly!!! they are completely unrelated..but you still choose to make the connection because you want to..because you hate moslems..because you think arabs are the evil(hey! i am adopting your lingo)
Now, you descend into false and unsupportable ad hominem slander. I simply brought up the undeniable fact of the prior mujaheddin training and jihad call, and for imparting this information I am accused of being an Islam-hater, when I have clearly stated on many occasions that it is the murderous minority Wahhab/Qutb Al Qaedan variant with which I take issue (as any reasonable person would), and accused of considering Arabs to be evil, when in fact most Arabs are not Al Qaedan, many are not even Muslim, and most Muslims are not even Arabs, but East Asians (Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.). Islam is a religion; Arabs are an ethinc group. It is fallacious to equate the two. Plus, if you reread the quote to which you so inappropriately reply, you will be forced to admit that I stated explicitly that "whether or not...is another matter entirely" (that is, not necessarily possessing the factual basis of which the statements about the prior training and call do, but instead being at this point no more than a matter of speculation).
Quote:
I happen to think that police presence was interfering with their underground drug, prostitution and black market merchandise economy, with which they were augmenting their government welfare checks, and they decided to drive the gendarmes out, so that their customers wouldn't feel too self-conscious in front of them to conduct business. However, since the car-burning riots, their former customers refuse to drive in there any more, anyway, so they're screwed either way.
what does this have to do with you trying to implicate islam in the recent paris events?
Actually, it is what I think is the main reason that the criminal 'youths' rioted. Didn't you get that? So what I actually said is far from what you are trying to impute to me; I stated that there is a POSSIBILITY that these prior processes and events had SOME effect, but that in my opinion, the major determining factor was the police presence interfering with the criminal cottage industry in the banlieus.
do you see how you make no sense when you try to 'connect' events in an effort to blame islam and moslems and arabs...you throw in israel/palestine too for some misguided reason.
I tossed in the Palestinian example simply because that is a case where we KNOW that an uprising was pre-planned, and the event used to justify it was indeed nothing more than a pretext. This is something which we DO NOT know concerning the Paris riots - it is nothing more than a speculative possibility, and, AS I HAVE PREVIOUSLY STATED, contra your bizarre and nonsensical accusations, most likely, the deaths of the two youths were indeed used as a pretext with which to justify an action which the criminal 'youths' in the banlieus already wanted to take, but the actual motivating purpose behind the Paris riots was almost certainly for the purpose of eliminating the criminal-business-stifling police presence in the banlieus, rather than to establish Muslim-ruled enclaves in French territory.
you are still crazy, man. not going to dignify your blatherings anymore.
Considering the tenor of your interlocution, your contributions are of no constructive use whatsoever in the analysis and understanding of the Paris riot phenomenon, anyway...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pentagon officials acknowledged Tuesday that U.S. troops used white phosphorous as a weapon against insurgent strongholds during the battle of Fallujah last November.
At the same time, they denied an Italian television news report that the spontaneously flammable material had been used against civilians.
Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman, said that while white phosphorous is used most frequently to mark targets or obscure positions, it was used at times in Fallujah as an incendiary weapon against enemy combatants.
"It was not used against civilians," Venable said.
[Hermit] I would observe that the antonym for "civilians" is "military. We know that incendiaries were used against numerous people - from babes in arms to adults from the video and photographs produced by Rai News 24. This claim would make it appear that the US military was using incendiaries against soldiers. But in whose army? Ours? Iraq's? Or is there some other military in play? Which one has babes-in-arms and preteens as soldiers (And isn't this against a treaty provision? I remember something of the sort in the 90s due to some of the murderous doings in Liberia or West Africa.)?
[Hermit] I would further note that as occupiers, the US has a duty under the Geneva Conventions to safeguard the people and property of Iraq. One glimpse of the widespread carnage and devastation of Fallujah, which appeared almost Israeli in its brutality, should suggest, even to "Pentagon officials", that they have a prima facie war crime issue on their hands. But then, the US is blind to her own faults and those of Israel, and hypersensitive to the imagined or potential faults of others.
The spokesman referred reporters to an article in the March-April 2005 edition of the Army's Field Artillery magazine, an official publication, in which veterans of the Fallujah fight spelled out their use of white phosphorous and other weapons. The authors used the shorthand "WP" in referring to white phosphorous.
"WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition," the authors wrote. "We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE (high explosive)" munitions.
"We fired `shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."
The authors added, in citing lessons for future urban battles, that fire-support teams should have used another type of smoke bomb for screening missions in Fallujah "and saved our WP for lethal missions."
The battle for Fallujah was the most intense and deadly fight of the war, after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. The city, about 35 miles west of Baghdad on the Euphrates River, was a critical insurgent stronghold. The authors of the "after action" report said they encountered few civilians in their area of operations.
Italian communists held a sit-in Monday in front of the U.S. Embassy in Rome to protest the reported use by American troops of white phosphorous. Italy's state-run RAI24 news television aired a documentary last week that alleged the United States used white phosphorous shells in a "massive and indiscriminate way" against civilians during the Fallujah offensive.
The State Department initially denied that U.S. troops had used white phosphorous against enemy forces. "They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters," a department Web site said.
The department later said the statement had been incorrect.
"There is a great deal of misinformation feeding on itself about U.S. forces allegedly using `outlawed' weapons in Fallujah," the department said. "The facts are that U.S. forces are not using any illegal weapons in Fallujah or anywhere else in Iraq."
Venable said white phosphorous shells are a standard weapon used by field artillery units and are not banned by any international weapons convention to which the U.S. is a signatory.
White phosphorous is a colorless-to-yellow translucent wax-like substance with a pungent, garlic-like smell. The form used by the military ignites once it is exposed to oxygen, producing such heat that it bursts into a yellow flame and produces a dense white smoke. It can cause painful burn injuries to exposed human flesh.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
The pics that were given as evidence actually did not furnish any evidence of white phosphorus being used against civilians, as the skin of the corpses was carmelized yet their clothes were untouched. White phosphorus would've burned through any clothing with which it came into contact, and the carmelization is indicative of dry-climate sun-weathering - an indication that the corpses in question had been dead for some time prior to the Fallujah offensive - which, of course, means that they were killed by those who controlled Fallujah prior to that offensive, namely, the Al Qaedan jihadis.
Hermit is correct that the forces against which white phosphorus was used were not 'soldiers' in the conventional sense, as they held no allegiance to any country, but were instead infiltrated Al Qaedan terrorists who had seized control of Fallujah from its populace (which had largely subsequently fled the city), and were using it as a terror base from which to launch car-bombings throughout Iraq.
As to Hermit's "almost Israeli in its brutality" remark, it reveals his utter contempt for Israel. I think that what is much more brutal than anything the Israelis have recently done (I, too, find the Sabra and Chatilla massacres to be abhorrent, but note that the Israeli army did not itself perpetrate them, but instead - and this is reprehensible also - stood aside and allowed the Lebanese Phalangists to slaughter the refugee camp residents) is the common Palesinian terror practice of sending children wired with ball-bearing-packed explosives into crowds of Israeli civilian men, women and children for the purpose of detonating themselves and perpetrating widespread carnage.
The frenzy of the week in the blogosphere concerns the use of White Phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon at Fallujah. After initial State Department denials that did little for the American PR cause, the Pentagon has now made a matter-of-fact statement that it was indeed so used, but only against combatants, and therefore legally.
The blogospheric firestorm -- just now hitting the MSM in a significant way -- was sparked by an Italian broadcast film, purporting to be a documentary, in which the claims were first widely aired. The film consisted of interviews with participants limited to a Communist reporter, a researcher for a pacifist human rights group, two veterans turned anti-war activists, the director of a "human rights centre" based in Fallujah, and a former British back-bench MP also active in the anti-war movement. It also included supposedly damning photos and videos -- some purporting to show the horrific effects of white phosphorus bombardment upon those innocent civilians who ignored the American warnings to evacuate, issued well prior to the assault.
Unfortunately for those promoting the film's claims, its assertions are rather easily debunked. The primary evidence given for the accusation that WP was used on the bodies shown lies in the fact that the burned corpses are clad in intact clothing. However, John Pike, weapons expert at the internationally respected globalsecurity.org, has categorically stated that burns caused by white phosphorus are not consistent with bodies in undamaged clothing.
Similarly with the film's contention that WP is a "chemical weapon". It is in fact an incendiary weapon, commonly used since at least World War II. Its use as an antipersonnel weapon against combatants is not barred by any treaty -- a fact confirmed by Peter Kaiser, a spokesman for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the group that enforces the UN chemical weapons convention.
According to the (UK) Independent, Mr. Kaiser "said the convention permitted the use of such weapons for 'military purposes not connected with the use of chemical weapons and not dependent on the use of the toxic properties of chemicals as a method of warfare'", and that "the burns caused by WP were thermic rather than chemical and as such [its use is] not prohibited by the treaty."
Being detrimental to the premise of the 'documentary', such considerations remain unmentioned in the video.
As the film is so easily recognizable as nothing more than crude propaganda, even someone like Guardian columnist George Monbiot, the bete noir of US Iraq policy (and much else) rejects its claims, calling it "a turkey, whose evidence that white phosphorus was fired at Iraqi troops is flimsy and circumstantial".
Those familiar with Mr. Monbiot's ouevre will not be surprised to learn that this realization doesn't prevent him from announcing that "The US used chemical weapons in Iraq" -- far from it. The Guardian columnist is quick to repeat evidence from bloggers that proves his case.
In one instance, he cites "a reporter embedded with the marines in the April 2004 siege of Falluja", who wrote about WP use in the [San Diego, California] North County Times:
"'Gun up!' Millikin yelled ... grabbing a white phosphorus round from a nearby ammo can and holding it over the tube. 'Fire!' Bogert yelled, as Millikin dropped it. The boom kicked dust around the pit as they ran through the drill again and again, sending a mixture of burning white phosphorus and high explosives they call 'shake'n'bake' into... buildings where insurgents have been spotted all week."
Incidentally, some bloggers have used this account to attempt to show indiscriminate use of WP, possibly against civilians, by US troops. Such attempts emphasize this language:
"Bogert is a mortar team leader who directed his men to fire round after round of high explosives and white phosphorus charges into the city Friday and Saturday, never knowing what the targets were or what damage the resulting explosions caused.
[...]
"They say they have never seen what they've hit, nor did they talk about it ..."
Unfortunately for those wishing to demonstrate indiscriminate use by quoting this article, the journalist, Darrin Mortenson, told the BBC on Wednesday that:
"The way it's been borrowed for blogs, they just kind of take that out of context.
"They [artillery gunners] receive a fire mission from someone that can actually see the target ... they can never see it -- that's why it's called indirect fire
[...]
"So it sounds like it was indiscriminate by the way the blogs are using it, but that was not the way it was."
Interviewer: "You don't believe that they would use it against civilians?"
Mortenson: "I never saw anybody intentionally use any weapons against civilians"
Retuning to Mr. Monbiot's piece, his further evidence comes from the March 2005 edition of Field Artillery, a magazine published by the US Army:
" WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE [high explosive]. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."
Note that neither source makes claims that WP has been used against anything other than combatant positions -- and nowhere does Mr. Monbiot make such claims, as the only evidence he can find supporting such accusations is so suspect. His concern is to show that "chemical weapons" have been used. So now it's incumbent upon him to show that WP does in fact constitute weaponry of that type.
This effort, which is sorely lacking, begins in the fourth paragraph of his piece:
"White phosphorus is not listed in the schedules of the Chemical Weapons Convention. It can be legally used as a flare to illuminate the battlefield, or to produce smoke to hide troop movements from the enemy. Like other unlisted substances, it may be deployed for "Military purposes... not dependent on the use of the toxic properties of chemicals as a method of warfare".
This is correct, as we saw above from Mr. Kaiser. If the weapons use is "not dependent on the use of the toxic properties of chemicals", it's allowable, unless used against civilians.
Now Mr. Monbiot's deceptive spin begins:
"But it becomes a chemical weapon as soon as it is used directly against people. A chemical weapon can be 'any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm'."
This is simply not the case. Again, let's return to Mr. Kaiser, who, you will recall, is from the organization directly responsible for enforcing the chemical weapons conventions. Given that it was ignored, Mr. Kaiser's explanation is seemingly easy for people like Mr. Monbiot to miss, so I'll repeat them:
"The burns caused by WP were thermic rather than chemical and as such not prohibited by the treaty."
This is why WP is classified as a (permitted) incendiary weapon, rather than an illegal chemical agent.
Mr. Monbiot then tries to implicate smoke produced by burning WP -- smoke which is frequently used to screen friendly troops, and, in the words of globalsecurity.org -- a source he's just used in the previous paragraph! -- has caused "no recorded deaths", and "no casualties in combat operations"
Thus ends the argument that WP constitutes (implicitly illegal) chemical weaponry. After discussing the (lamentable) US backtracking on the issue, Monbiot then addresses the use of the mark 77 firebomb, which, like that of WP, is not prohibited against military targets.
The groundwork now laid, Mr. Monbiot finally arrives at the aim of his piece -- indeed, the Holy Grail of a certain kind of antiwar activist: to establish a moral equivalence between the US and Saddam Hussein:
"We were told that the war with Iraq was necessary for two reasons. Saddam Hussein possessed biological and chemical weapons and might one day use them against another nation. And the Iraqi people needed to be liberated from his oppressive regime, which had, among its other crimes, used chemical weapons to kill them. Tony Blair, Colin Powell, William Shawcross, David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen, Ann Clwyd and many others referred, in making their case, to Saddam's gassing of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988."
The meme equating the legal use of white phosphorus munitions with the gassing of thousands of defenseless civilians is breathtaking, but predictable -- and will no doubt continue its relentless march through the blogosphere, thanks in large part to Mr. Monbiot. What's more surprising is the readiness with which he makes the easily refuted claim that WP used against combatants is a "chemical weapon", with the implication that such use is illegal.
This is not to say that Mr. Monbiot is of no worth as a journalist -- far from it. Judging by his accurate assessment of the value of the Italian documentary, the Guardian should be using him as a film critic, leaving serious commentary to those with more rhetorical skill.
Re:Living with Death in a Surreal Matrix
« Reply #20 on: 2005-11-17 10:19:24 »
"The groundwork now laid, Mr. Monbiot finally arrives at the aim of his piece -- indeed, the Holy Grail of a certain kind of antiwar activist: to establish a moral equivalence between the US and Saddam Hussein:"
If the sneering tone and classical use of assertion in place of evidence didn't tell you that this smear piece was invalid, this sentence alone should suffice to show it as a transparent fabrication.
Anybody with a grain of sense realizes that the evidence shows that Saddam Hussein was a pragmatic and visionary sectarian tribal leader who successfully kept a powder keg of mutually hostile clans and religious alignments from immolating one another for decades, while dramatically improving their lifestyles, lifespan, education and technical capabilities - even during a decade long war against a much more brutal, ideologically driven neighbor.
On the other hand, the US started out by breaching sanctions and cynically acting to both sides of the Iran, Iraq war, until persuaded by Israel that Iraq had become a threat. Since then, the US has consistently accepted propaganda over evidence and acting out of belief in the face of the evidence, over a 15 year period has acted to subvert the UN to prevent Iraq from obtaining justice, has destroyed much of the Iraqi infrastructure, has killed massive numbers of Iraqis through deliberate actions to create conditions where malnutrition and disease would result in large scale civilian deaths and culminated these hostilities in a blatantly illegal war initiated on the grounds of utterly specious and transparently fabricated pretexts - and is currently trumping this by attempting to illegally instantiate a new form of government. As if this was not bad enough, the new government appears to be nothing more (or less) than another brutal, primitive, tribal theocratic Islamic society with little hope of ever improving, partially because most of the Iraqi assets appear to have been distributed amongst American interests. And while we are drawing up an indictment, regional stability appears to have been massively disrupted.
In such circumstances, it is not possible to establish moral equivalency. George Monbiot is undoubtedly smart enough to know this. The author of the above piece of claptrap, and person who saw fit to post it on the CoV, in its entirety and without excuse, comment or discussion, apparently are not.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
I never cease to be amazed by the strange attraction that mass murdering totalitarian despots have held, and continue to hold, for many far leftists. They lionized Mao, admired Stalin, and even, in the case of Chomsky, defended Pol Pot and Milosevic. May the people of the world forever be spared the cruel and bloody rule of such 'pragmatic and visionary' thugs as Hermit would prefer for them over constitutional democratic self-government.
Re:Living with Death in a Surreal Matrix
« Reply #22 on: 2005-11-20 14:34:12 »
Invalid assertions. Attempting to respond to documented facts with unsupported opinion pieces. Attempted Ad Hominen. Our NeoConArtist seems to be in trouble.
Meanwhile, 12 days have passed since the following "inconvenient" facts were first presented to our NeoConArtist. Facts which it seems our NeoConArtist seems to have forgotten to deal with, while continuing to make neverending assertions of "victory" and posting neverending streams of op-ed about how "Final Victory" is lurking, hoof in mouth, under every succeeding milestone. Simultaneously, reading the news, it seems that things in Iraq (and in Afghanistan, and in Saudi Arabia, and in Jordan, and in Syria, and in Palestine, and in Israel, etc, etc. ad nauseam) continue to get worse and worse. Perhaps our NeoConArtist apologist should give up on TV and read the news. After all, until he responds to these issues, with strong evidence instead of a slew of opinions from the demonstrably demented, any claims he makes about "winning" are clearly unsustainable opinion.
[COMBAT FATALITIES] U.S. military fatalities from hostile acts have risen from an average of about 17 per month just after President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003, to an average of 82 per month.
[COMBAT WOUNDED] The average number of U.S. soldiers wounded by hostile acts per month has spiraled from 142 to 808 during the same period. Iraqi civilians have suffered even more deaths and injuries, although reliable statistics aren't available.
[INSURGENT ATTACKS] Attacks on the U.S.-led coalition since November 2003, when statistics were first available, rose from 735 a month to 2,400 in October. Air Force Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, deputy operations director of the multinational forces, said Friday that attacks were currently running at 75 a day, about 2,300 a month, well below a spike in November during the assault on Fallujah but nearly as high as October's total.
[BOMBINGS] The average number of mass-casualty bombings has grown from zero in the first few months of the U.S.-led occupation to an average of 13 per month.
[ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION] Electricity production has been below prewar levels since October, largely because of sabotage by insurgents, with just 6.7 hours of power daily in Baghdad in early January, according to the State Department.
[OIL] Iraq is pumping about 500,000 barrels of oil a day fewer than its prewar peak of 2.5 million barrels per day as a result of attacks, according to the State Department.
[INSURGENTS] At the close of 2003, U.S. commanders put the number of insurgents at 5,000. Earlier this month, Gen. Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani, the director of the Iraqi intelligence service, said there are 200,000 insurgents, including at least 40,000 hard-core fighters. The rest, he said, are part-time fighters and supporters who provide food, shelter, money and intelligence.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
There are more fatalities because US forces are on the offensive in western Anbar Province, sealing infiltration routes from Syria and eliminating Al Qaedan strongholds there. Terrorists who have no option to retreat will, of course, fight to the death. In that theatre, the ration of terrrorists killed to US soldiers killed is about twenty-to-one.
It is reasonable that Iraqi military casualties should rise as they increasingly assume a greater portion of the military actions. That they progressively should do so until they are able to conduct same without US troop support is a major foal of both the Iraqi and the US government.
Most of the attacks being perpetrated now are not military engagements; they are instead the explosion of roadside IED's. This indicates an increased unwillingness on the part of the Al Qaedans to engage US troops in battle, due to the catastrophic losses they invariably incur when they have attempted to do so.
The mass casualty bombings are directed not at US personnel, but at Iraqis, and the lion's share of these are directed at Iraqi civilians. This attampt to terrorize the piopulace will instead result in the terrorists alienating their population base of support, so that they are increasingly unable to swim like undetected fish among them. One of the motivastions for the mass bombings is the Al Qaedan attempt to foment civil war between the Sunni and the Shia by attacking Shia civilians, in the hope that they can provoke a massive revenge response that would serve to recruit more jihadis from the Sunnis outside Iraq. The Shia know this, and, on the advice of Ayatollan Sistani, are exercising admirable restraint.
Oil production will rise as the insurgents who attack the pipelines in an attermpt to deny the Iraqi government oil funds are progressively eliminated.
Most of the insurgents, both the Al Aaedan infiltrators and the indigenous Baathist remanats, are Sunnis, and are concentrated in the Sunni areas of Iraq (four out of the fourteen Iraqi provinces). However, the support among the Sunni pupulace for these terrorists is waning; one of the major Sunni parties endorsed participation in the recent vote to approve the Iraqi constitution, and practically all Sunni parties are preparing to participate in the coming election to be held in December, which will elect the first Iraqi government under tha constitution.
The head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Zarqawi, has run into massive difficulties since his bombing of a wedding party in his home country of Jordan. 200,000 Jordanians marched in protest against him in Amman, his own family has publicly disowned him, and there are as yet unconfirmed reports that he has been killed in a farmhouse near Mosul (DNA results pending). If this is indeed the case, the terrorists will have lost their two chief leaders in less than a month (Al Douri, the leader of the Baathist remnants, recently died of leukemia). This cannot help but dispirit and demoralize the terror forces.
Those who are urging that the US repeat the mistakes it made in Vietnam and post-Soviet Afghanistan will be sorely disappointed; the US will remain in Iraq until it can be assured that the country will be able to defend both its constitutional-democratic government and its citizens from terrorist depredations, and will never become a second Talibanic Afghanistan; that is, a second Al Qaedan base within which planning and training for attacks against the US and other Western targets can proceed, and from which terrorists can be infiltrated into target countries for the purpose of perpetrating such attacks (as happened on 9/11).
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