Stare at this.

Now look back again.

I want this seared, seared into your memory.

This is an image from an al Qaeda torture manual captured in Iraq.

They use this and other techniques to torture Iraqi men and women, Shia, Sunni, and Kurd. They also use them when they can capture American and Iraqi soldiers and police.

I'd love to provide you with a link to the Washington Post or New York Times article detailing the atrocities contained, but they haven't been written yet. Nor can these articles be found in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, or the Philadelphia Daily News, and you won't see these images on the network nightly news, either.

While we are locked in wars against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq and other obscure places you couldn't find on a map, the American press has decided that you, the American citizen, don't need to see these images.

You don't deserve to see these images.

The near orgasmic contentment on the face of the torturer as he burns his victim with an iron is too inflammatory, and the American press wouldn't want you to become inflamed towards our enemy during a time of war, now would they?

I can completely understand where these media organizations are coming from.

They've spent years writing and buying into their own narrative that America is to blame for the problems in Iraq and that the threat of al Qaeda is over-hyped... and did I mention, over-hyped?

If they were to actually show, in stark terms, what al Qaeda truly is and what it is capable of, then the American people might start viewing them as Very. Bad. People. Such a thing could complicate the defeat of Chimperor Bush withdrawal plans. It is better to act like such things doesn't exist, and make sure most people miss it.

At the very least, they deserve a hand for staying "on message."

If these (and other) graphic images hadn't been picked up by The Smoking Gun and the Austrialian Press (Fox News posted, then retracted a story) you probably wouldn't have seen them at all.

Now consider that most people probably still won't see these images on the television news, or see them in print. They won't because the various news organizations in this and other countries either don't consider them newsworthy, or they consider the images too inflammatory.

Then wonder how much else you aren't seeing and hearing.

Our soldiers tell us time and time and time again that the war they are fighting in Iraq is not the war being reported by our media.

Do you believe them now?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:35 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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You've got to love those diligent AFP photo editors.

If this is what gets through to publication, it make you wonder what slips through the cracks...

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:50 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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You would hope that after being in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, that a major news organization such as CNN might be able to tell the difference between U.S. soldiers and their Iraqi counterparts.

You would hope.

The uniform is clearly Iraqi (this is what our Army's uniform looks like), and the weapon is obviously a Soviet-designed variant of the RPD squad automatic weapon (SAW) carried by Iraqi security forces and insurgents alike, but never issued to regular U.S. military forces.

Refusing to identify the nationality of the soldier isn't "wrong," but it is certainly imprecise, and by saying that he "searches for missing comrades," most people would logically infer that he was a U.S. soldier, as it is indeed U.S. soldiers that are missing. He is our ally, but he is clearly not a member of the U.S. Army. CNN is sloppy, but at least they aren't running enemy propaganda as news today.

Meanwhile, AFP has no problem identifying the soldier as Iraqi, but I guess they're simply paying more attention.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:52 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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And here I thought the media were against war with Iran.

I'll be very interested to see whether or not the Justice Department will attempt to prosecute anyone in the intelligence community who leaked this information, as they obviously should. I doubt that Brain Ross or the staff of ABC News will be tried for criminal offenses (including treason), though the majority of comments posted on the Blotter's comment thread clearly favor that action... at least those they haven't yet deleted.

Ross and ABC News have purposefully undermined the non-military removal of a government that is a proud state sponsor of terrorism. If Ross and ABC News are successful in derailing covert non-military attempts to replace the Iranian government, then a military option may very well end up being our last remaining option.

If we are forced into a war because ABC News torpedoed our last, best hope at a non-military solution to the problem of Iran's militant, expansionist, Shia Islamist government, then the resulting deaths on both sides will belong in part to ABC News executives and Brian Ross.

Should that eventuality come to pass, the Federal Communications Commission should seriously consider suspending or removing ABC's broadcasting license as a warm up, and move on to more serious legal remedies from there.

Update: As is their pattern, the staff of the Blotter quickly removed my comment to their post that echoed the sentiments expressed in this blog entry.

ABC News gleefully exposes classified national security information, but apparently cannot tolerate some criticism of their own dubious operations. I can only wonder how many other criticizing comments they have deleted.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:30 PM | Comments (24) | Add Comment
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File this under "not a PhotoShop, but it should be."

You can clearly see three Lebanese soldiers in combat fatigues (and the helmet of a fourth) as they cover their ears while firing a mortar against the Fatah Islam militant group outside of Tripoli, Lebanon.

But who is the forth guy in the phone, apparently wearing a brown polo shirt, seemingly obvious to the mortar firing at his feet, smiling as he talks on a cell phone? He looks more like an executive on a golf course than a soldier on the battlefield.

This is odd, even for Lebanon...

Note: The inset is my own, and is not in the original.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:28 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Knowing the intense scrutiny that their photographers face following last summer's Adnan Hajj incident, most news organizations are carefully reviewing photos taken by journalists in the Middle East before publication, to make sure they havne't been modified. They are, however, still failing to question the captions they use to describe photos, which can also be used to deceive news consumers.

The two photos shown below have been published in the past 24 hours, and are a prime example.

AFP ran the following photo and caption yesterday:

Palestinian mourners carry the body of Hatem Hmeid, 15, during his funeral in the Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip. Eight people were killed in a new Israeli air raid in Gaza on Sunday just hours after Israel's security cabinet gave the army the go-ahead to ramp up operations against Palestinian militants.(AFP/Mohammed Abed)

Reuters ran this photo and caption today:

Palestinians pray near the bodies of nine Palestinians killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza May 21, 2007. Israel launched more strikes against Gaza militants on Sunday, killing nine Palestinians in two aerial assaults, including one that struck the home of a prominent Hamas politician, security officials said. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)

View the pictures and the captions that these news organizations provided with them, and you're looking on what may appear in your local, regional, national, or international news outlet of choice.

What you will probably take away from these photos is that once again, those dastardly Israelis are once again slaughtering defenseless Palestinians while targeting militants. Both captions mentioned that Israel was targetting militants, but both avoided mention that the dead pictured were apparently those same militants, and not innocent bystanders. Considering the names of the photographers, I wouldn't be too surprised if that vagueness was by intent.

The pictures, however, tell us a bit more than the captions would indicate.

Look closely at the photos above, and then take a gander at this photo in the Guardian Newsblog.

Hamas supporters on the left, with the green flags, Fateh on the right with yellow flags. Photograph: Laila el-Haddad

If seeing is believing, the dead in the pictures in the AFP and Reuters photos were militants wrapped in the flags of Fatah and Hamas.

Palestinians?

Yes, they most were.

Civilian victims?

I suspect not.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:33 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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MNF-I has issued a press release detailing the repelling of a large-scale terrorist attack by Iraqi Security Forces this past Wednesday:

Iraqi Security Forces countered several terrorists who targeted bridges, transition jails, police stations and a combat outpost with vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, sporadic small-arms fire and indirect mortar attacks throughout the evening.

"This was a total team effort on the part of the Iraqi Security Forces and emergency responders," said U.S. Army Col. Stephen Twitty, commander of 4th Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. "This Iraqi team showed the people of Mosul that they are resolute in their efforts to defeat this very cowardly, desperate enemy while protecting innocent civilians."

The first wave of attacks consisted of three VBIEDs, which targeted the Badush Bridge northwest of Mosul at 5:15 p.m., and was followed by another VBIED attack at the Aski-Mosul Bridge west of the city at 5:45 p.m.

Two more VBIEDs exploded outside a police station and a transition jail during the first wave. The first VBIED was a dump truck, which detonated upon reaching the entrance to the station. The driver of the second VBIED attempted to enter the compound but was killed by Iraqi Security Forces.

As the driver of the second VBIED was killed, terrorists attempted to breach the transition jail to release prisoners by using small-arms fire. However, Iraqi Security Forces quelled the attempt and kept the facility secured.

The second wave of attacks involved another dump truck VBIED parked outside a southeast police station at approximately 7 p.m. As the driver abandoned the vehicle, he was seen by Iraqi Police and was killed as he was fleeing the area. The Iraqi Police immediately cordoned the vicinity before detonation. No casualties resulted.

Small-arms fire erupted during the second wave at seven police stations throughout the city and one combat outpost. In all cases, Iraqi Army and Police repelled the enemy and killed at least 15 terrorists and turned back the remaining opposition.

"The Iraqi Security Forces are in the lead, and they are certainly a capable force," said Twitty. "Their reactions to the attacks [on Wednesday] only serve to prove their ability to destroy and remove terrorists. Their actions demonstrate their commitment to this city and its people. I am extremely proud to serve beside them."

Stars and Stripes indicates that up to 200 insurgents may have been involved in the May 16 attacks.

If these accounts are close to being accurate (and there have not been any conflicting accounts that I am aware of), the Iraqi Security Forces in Mosul performed extremely well, repelling a large scale (company-sized ), multi-wave attack with no outside support from U.S. forces.

CNN covered the story, adding:

Mosul police spokesman Gen. Saied al-Jabouri said intelligence reports suggested the attacks were coordinated by al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq -- which he said were "two sides of the same coin" -- and were an effort to free at least 300 inmates from the al-Faisaliya prison in Mosul.

Al-Jabouri said seven of the 10 vehicle-borne bombs were suicide car bombings and that a key bridge, many buildings, shops and homes were destroyed during a six-hour period starting late Wednesday afternoon.

A U.S. military source said the bombs killed 10 Iraqi police officers, one Iraqi soldier and two civilians. He credited the Iraqi security forces for these "minimal casualties," saying it "could have been much worse if they were not doing their job."

"The ISF dealt with it, showing the people they are trained and ready," the U.S. military official said.

Al-Jabouri said Iraqi troops, backed by the U.S. military, fought with insurgents for two hours across Mosul, killing 15 of them and one Saudi national.

You would hope that the major news organizations would report the successful repulsion of such an attack as the victory it was, and as an example of success that can be won by Iraqi military and police units. al Qaeda and the ISI are the insurgency's "varsity" in Iraq, and when placed head-to-head against Iraq's best, they lost a battle in which they had apparent advantages in surprise and firepower.

This should be regarded as significant news.

But it is very difficult to find many major western news outlets carrying a report of the events in Mosul on that day, quite an odd development considering the size of the attack. This is especially odd when you consider that these same news outlets were able to print dozens of stories about a pair of ABC journalists killed in Mosul on May 18, just two days later.

I understand that the deaths of two journalists in Iraq is very important to those in news-gathering industry, but I don't think I'd be wrong in state that a rare and sophisticated company-sized attack by al Qaeda and the ISI being repelled by Iraqi security forces is a far more important news story than the deaths of two reporters, both for those in the news business, and those new consumers around the world.

The Iraqi security forces thwarted a major assault and an attempt to free 300 prisoners, and suffered minimal casualties in a serious engagement.

That's news.

It's too bad there seems so little interest among professional news organizations in reporting it.

Update: Heh:

Is there any way we can get Al Qaeda on record as supporting carbon dioxide production? Seems like the only way to get the MSM's interest.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:57 AM | Comments (36) | Add Comment
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Q: Who doesn't wipe away small trickle of blood running from their hairline, down between their eyes, off the end of their nose, and around their mouth?

A: A car-swarming Palestinian, when a Reuters cameraman is nearby.

The photo appears to be a cropped version of this wider image, which shows the carswarm in progress, and the remains of the mangled militant van hit by Israeli aircraft.

Perhaps I'm too jaded to be objective after last year's Pallywood antics, but I'd guess there's a more than decent shot that his wound came from being jostled in the crowd swarming around the sharp, twisted metal of the bombed van, and not from injuries from the blast itself.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:49 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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Did you hear about the high school hit yesterday by a pair of missiles?

Of course you didn't. It was an Israeli school in Sderot that was struck, and the missiles were fired by Hamas.

A quick Google search of news outlets shows that this kind of school violence is apparently not newsworthy by the standards of our gatekeeper media.

To be fair, Google News did not capture all mentions of the story (NOTE: see update below).

The New York Times mentioned the attack in passing in the ninth paragraph of this story, which was focused almost exclusively on Israel's retaliatory air strike against Hamas commanders.

CNN followed a similar pattern, kindly donating a few words about the high school attack in the tenth paragraph of a story focused on Israel's air strike and the Hamas-Fatah not-civil war.

Only CBN covered the attack on the high school with any depth at all:

Palestinian terrorists in Gaza launched at least 11 Kassam rockets at the besieged Israeli city of Sderot Thursday, hitting a high school and a greenhouse in another Israeli community in the western Negev. Scores of rockets have fallen in the area this week, forcing thousands of residents to seek shelter elsewhere.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has promised a "harsh and severe" response to the rocket attacks, which could include the renewal of targeted assassinations of terrorist groups in Gaza or eventually even a military reinvasion of the Gaza Strip.

Two rockets hit the high school in the Shaar HaNegev Regional Council as students met in fortified classrooms to take their matriculation exams in mathematics.

The Kassams damaged an unfortified section of the building and lightly injured two people. Several others suffered shock.

Rueters' Nidal al-Mughrabi completely neglected to mention the attack on the high school, even though his story was side-barred by these pictures of the attack.

Caption: An Israeli firefighter surveys the scene after a rocket, fired by Palestinian militants, landed in a high school classroom in the southern town of Sderot May 17, 2007. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen

Caption: Israeli students embrace during a rocket attack at their high school in the southern town of Sderot May 17, 2007. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen

Caption: Israeli students hold their hands up to their faces on the scene of a rocket attack at their high school in the southern town of Sderot May 17, 2007. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen

The news outlets of the world apparently have little interest in the attack on an Israeli school, but instead bend over backwards to write more than 2,500 3,000 stories about the results of the Israeli air force targeting Hamas leaders who are blamed for ordering the attacks on Sderot.

Update: A reader at Wizbang! noted that the Google search I ran for "Sderot high school missile" was incorrect, as a rocket, not a missile, was used by Hamas. I then ran a Google News search on "Sderot high school rocket," and the search hits jumped dramatically... no, not really.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:03 AM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
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This sure sounds like one to me:

Gaza City was shuttered on Wednesday as gunmen took over rooftops and top-floor apartments. Most everyone else huddled fearfully indoors on the fourth day of factional Palestinian fighting that is drawing in the Israeli military.

At least 19 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday — more than 40 have been killed over the past four days — in fighting between Fatah and Hamas as their unity government fractures and rage rises on both sides.

"We want this to end, because what's happening endangers not just the unity government, but the Palestinian nation and cause," said Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator and an aide to President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas attacked symbols of Fatah power in Gaza, including the home of the chief security commander. He was not there, but six bodyguards were killed.

The Los Angeles Times report is equally dire:

Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah wage battles in the streets of the Gaza Strip. Three truces have come and gone. In four days, at least 40 people have been killed, including 14 on Wednesday, as an increasingly violent struggle threatens to bring down what had been touted as a Palestinian "unity" government.

When their new political power-sharing coalition was unveiled in March, amid smiles and congratulations, leaders of Fatah and Hamas pledged to put an end to their fighting. But the ferocious violence shredding the Gaza Strip this week has made a mockery of the agreement. Rank-and-file members of the two factions are once again battling for supremacy on the streets, as ordinary residents, worn down by years of economic and social chaos, remain trapped in their homes.

Are Palestinians in a civil war?

Wikipedia defines a "civil war" as:

A civil war is a war in which parties within the same culture, society or nationality fight against each other for the control of political power.

Some civil wars are categorized as revolutions when major societal restructuring is a possible outcome of the conflict. An insurgency, whether successful or not, is likely to be classified as a civil war by some historians if, and only if, organized armies fight conventional battles. Other historians state the criterion for a civil war is that there must be prolonged violence between organized factions or defined regions of a country (conventionally fought or not).

The definition provided by Wikipedia is interesting when applied to the quite different conflicts in Iraq and Gaza.

The conflict in Iraq is routinely referred to as a civil war by politicians and journalists, even though doing so relies on the debated insurgency definition above. Clearly, the Iraqi conflict, while certainly involving an insurgency and intertwined sectarian conflicts, have never seen the widespread use of organized armies fighting conventional battles. Most of the sectarian violence is typically composed of guerillas (Sunni or Shia) attacking primarily civilian targets with mortar fire, IEDs and bombs, along with kidnappings, murders, and ambushes.

Calling the Iraqi sectarian conflict a civil war thus relies upon a debated definition.

The conflict in Gaza, however, seems too far more closely fit the agreed upon definition of a civil war. Fatah and Hamas are well organized, typically wear something of a uniform (if not consistently), fight small scale but typically intense conventional battles, and clearly fight for political power as their primary goal, and usually against recognized targets such as enemy units, commanders, and positions.

Shouldn't the Palestinian "factional fighting" thus easily earn the definition of a "civil war?"

If politicians and the media can used a debated definition to declare that Iraq is in a civil war, then they should certainly consider the near letter-perfect and undisputed definition of a "civil war" to describe the battle between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza.

The Palestinians in Gaza seem to be clearly involved in a bloody civil war. I'm curious as to why politicians and the media won't provide the proper definition for this conflict that it so clearly deserves.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:45 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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A chronic problem of news agencies reporting from Iraq is their apparent inability to separate sectarian violence--violence committed by one sect on another, typically Sunni to Shia, or Shia to Sunni--with the terrorist attacks instigated by al Qaeda and aligned groups.

al Qaeda will attack against anyone and everyone else, including their Sunni co-religionists. It is this propensity towards terrorism for terrorism's sake that has spurred both the Anbar and Diyala Awakening movements.

AFP today provides a prime example of the media mislabeling an act of violence, turning a terrorist attack into a sectarian attack, even when their own report indicates they got it wrong:

Insurgent bombers detonated a van bomb in a crowded Iraqi market, police said on Wednesday, as Shiite militiamen clashed with police and the US military hunted for three kidnapped comrades.

The latest apparently sectarian attack ripped through a Shiite enclave northeast of Baghdad late on Tuesday, killing at least 32 civilians and wounding 65 more, according to local security and municipal officials.

Iraqi officials said the bomb had been packed with tanks of chlorine gas, but the US military said a team sent to the scene could not confirm this.

Other news organizations are also reporting on this story, and all are mentioning the still unconfirmed reports that chlorine gas canisters were used in the attack.

Now, if true, who has a M.O. of using chlorine-laced conventional bombs against civilians?

Why, I just don't know.

/sarcasm

If you click through the links, you'll notice that al Qaeda and it's umbrella group, the Islamic State of Iraq, have detonated these weapons against Sunni and Shia civilians, and government forces alike.

While disputed, the claims of chlorine in the explosives would actually point away from a sectarian attack, towards a terrorist attack by al Qaeda or its terrorist allies.

You would hope AFP and other news organizations would pick up on things like that, and yet here they go, arguing against their own reporting, getting it wrong... again.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:05 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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It should probably come as no small wonder that the majority of the American people are against the War in Iraq; getting faulty misleading or inaccurate or even purposefully biased information does that.

Time and again and again, our soldiers and Marines tell us that the war they are fighting in Iraq is not the one being reported in the professional media.

Karin Brulliard's article in today's Washington Post is a prime example, starting with the headline, "Bombs Kill 20 in Sunni Insurgent Stronghold."

It may come as a bit of a shock to both Brulliard and her WaPo editors, but Ramadi has not been an insurgent "stronghold" by any practical definition for months.

Newly commissioned Iraqi police, tribal militias and Sunni and Shia Army units have been consistently rolling back al Qaeda and aligned insurgents in Ramadi since the founding of the Anbar Salvation Council last year.

The bulk of al Qaeda and its supporters have fled Ramadi, have no bases and control no large swathes of territory, and take to the streets openly at the great risk of being shot by either local citizens, Iraqi Police, Iraqi Army soldiers, American Army soldiers, or Marines. Just a tip to the Washington Post: if they don't control the ground, you can't call it a stronghold.

Even beyond the headline, Brulliard and the Post show an ignorance that is hard to ignore:

Iraqi army Lt. Col. Thamir Ahmed blamed the attacks on the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. He said the body of one of the bombers was found by authorities 300 yards from the car he detonated, still strapped in the driver's seat.

Perhaps in a Harry Turtledove alternative history novel al Qaeda could be considered a "Sunni insurgent group" in Iraq, but not in this world.

al Qaeda was, is, and remains an international terrorist group, and is composed mostly of foreign fighters, even in Iraq. The dead suicide bomber, like up to 90% of suicide bombers before him, was likely a foreign-born, non-Iraqi terrorist crossing into Iraq from Syria.

It makes it difficult for consumers of the Washington Post and other news organizations to make informed decisions about the war when the reporters themselves miss crucial distinctions, misreport facts, and mischaracterize the events and actors of the conflict. I could perhaps understand misstating the nature or character of one of the groups acting in this conflict early in the war, but as the conflict has been on-going since 2003, the media has very little excuse for these kinds of inaccuracies.

A little competence would be nice.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:32 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Let hope that what happens here, stays here:

One man was killed and another person escaped injury Monday in an explosion of a small device left atop a vehicle outside a Las Vegas Strip resort, authorities said.

Police said the blast was not a terrorist act, but an apparent murder of a hotel employee.

"We believe the victim of this event was the intended target," said Officer Bill Cassell, a Las Vegas police spokesman, who called the victim an employee of the Luxor hotel-casino. The person who narrowly escaped injury was also a hotel employee, Cassell said.

I'm admittedly late to this story, and rather thankful I am, otherwise, I might have erroneously reported with other media and bloggers the apparent pre-mature detonation of a backpack bomber. I don't hold any of the bloggers commenting on this case responsible for the erroneous reporting, which seems to be a case of the professional media once again trying to rush out a story before actually having the facts of the incident verified.

This was, if the second round of reports is accurate (and the second round of reporting is generally more accurate than the first, if still often imperfect), most likely a targeted assassination, and not a terrorist with a case of premature detonation.

Using explosives is a rather rare method of carrying out an assassination, precisely due to the threat of unwanted collateral damage.

The KTLA account of the detonation linked by Allah is particularly frightening if accurate, in that it describes the device detonating as the apparent target attempted to move it.

It could be that the device was command-detonated and that the bomber chose that exact moment to detonate the bomb, but the other possibility is that the bomb had a motion-activated trigger. This means that anyone else who may have attempted to move a device so armed (from a hotel security officer to an opportunistic thief, to a "good Sam") could have been killed.

I've sent in an info request to the ATF Arson and Explosives Division seeking clarification of what kind of trigger they have recovered, but considering that the answer would reveal part of an on-going investigation, I don't anticipate any sort of a response.

Update: Averill P. Graham, US DOJ, writes back this morning to state that the correct way of requesting information is a dead-tree FOIA request. Frankly, I'm not that interested.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:03 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Read this, and you'll be asking that question as well.

It isn't rocket science.

al Qaeda in Iraq is the lead element in a coalition of Sunni insurgent groups that now calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).

al Qaeda in particular and the ISI in general are becoming increasingly unpopular even within the Sunni insurgency because of al Qaeda's tactic of using foreign suicide bombers to indiscriminately target Iraqi civilians, Sunni and Shia, and their vastly different goals:

...the insistence that homegrown insurgent groups bow down to the Islamic State was insulting to the Iraqi fighters defending their homeland. The fact that the Islamic State's end goal -- the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in Iraq -- was not the end goal for Iraqi insurgent groups, despite their rhetoric in support of an Islamic state, was another obvious source of contention.

The Islamic State's insistence that Iraqi groups subordinate themselves to its hierarchy and vision only increased after November, leading to a number of documented clashes between the Islamic State and homegrown insurgent groups. When the Islamic State began targeting Iraqi insurgent leaders with attacks and assassinations, the Iraqi groups responded with vigor.

There are essentially two conflicts going on in Iraq.

One is the sectarian "civil war" we've heard so much about in the press, which is largely occurring along Sunni and Shia sectarian lines. Sunni and Shia death squads target the opposite sect. This is going to take a long time to quell, and will take primarily a political/social/cultural solution.

The other is a fight between government and coalition forces and an increasing number of Sunni tribes against a dwindling number of Islamist terrorists, primarily al Qaeda and it's remaining supporters. The solution to this particular problem is decidedly far more military in nature, and if recent trends continue, the solution may be coming sooner rather than later.

You would hope that someone as smart as Dana Milbank could figure this out, and perhaps it is still not too late.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:50 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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