Friday, August 10, 2007

Told Ya So!!!

The war is lost! We can't win the war in Iraq! The Iraqis don't want us there! The war in Iraq has done nothing but fuel more suicide bombers!

Sounds familiar?

Those are words said by Democrat leadership in Congress, analysts, and media myrmidons.

Why do I care?

Because while they are right in some parts of their opposition of the war, they are wrong in others. They are right in saying that the war has fueled anti-American sentiment with worldwide muslims. In fact two studies were done detailing where and numbers of suicide bombers from other countries. In other words, the majority of suicide attacks is not from Iraqis but, from insuregnts bent on destabilizing our attempt to get the young democracy in it's fragile infancy.

Suicide bombers in Iraq mostly foreigners, two new studies say
Attackers have twin goals: destabilizing the government and driving the U.S. out.

Suicide bombers in Iraq are overwhelmingly foreigners bent on destabilizing the government and undermining U.S. interests there, two independent studies have concluded.

The studies report that the number of suicide bombings in Iraq has now surpassed those conducted worldwide since the early 1980s. The findings suggest that extremists from throughout the region and around the world are fueling Iraq's violence.

"The war on terrorism -- and certainly the war in Iraq -- has failed in decreasing the number of suicide attacks and has really radicalized the Muslim world to create this concept of martyrs without borders," said Mohammed Hafez, a visiting professor at the University of Missouri in Kansas City and the author of one of the two studies.

Hafez, whose new book is "Suicide Bombers in Iraq," has identified the nationalities of 124 bombers who attacked in Iraq. Of those, the largest number -- 53 -- were Saudis. Eight apiece came from Italy and Syria, seven from Kuwait, four from Jordan and two
each from Belgium, France and Spain. Others came from North and East Africa,
South Asia and various Middle Eastern and European countries. Only 18 -- 15 percent -- were Iraqis.

In the second study, Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor who runs the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, identified the nationalities of 55 suicide bombers in Iraq. Sixteen were Saudis, seven were Syrians and five were Algerians. Kuwait, Morocco and Tunisia each supplied three. Thirteen -- 24 percent -- were Iraqi Sunni Muslims.

Hafez and Pape said Iraqi Shiite Muslims hadn't carried out suicide attacks so far and instead had restricted their role in the sectarian violence to militia activity.

Pinning down the nationalities of suicide bombers can be tricky because they leave few physical remains, and extremist groups often don't claim the attacks until much later. The U.S. military says it does some DNA testing to investigate the bombers' identities.

Both researchers relied on extremist Web sites, "martyr" videos, news reports and statements to compile the data on nationalities. Hafez also gathered some information from online chats and discussion forums.

U.S. intelligence estimates -- based on interviews with detainees and captured documents -- indicate that most suicide bombers in Iraq are non-Iraqi.

Suicide attacks more than doubled each year from the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to 2005, Pape said. In 2006, he said, they jumped just under a third. The American military has reported more than 1,400 since January 2004.

Before the U.S.-led invasion, there had never been a suicide bombing in Iraq.

Pape attributed the attacks to the presence of American troops, which now number 162,000, in Iraq.

The notion that most of the suicide bombers are foreigners engaged in a global movement is exaggerated, he said, since about 75 percent come from the Arabian Peninsula, which is close to the U.S. forces in Iraq.

"The Americans have all the capability and are right there," Pape said. "That's what allows terrorist leaders to build a sense of urgency."

U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that al-Qaida in Iraq operates for the most part independently of the broader al-Qaida terrorist group.

According to Hafez, extremist groups in Iraq conduct suicide bombings against fellow Muslims rather than U.S. troops in a campaign to destabilize the government and spark sectarian warfare.

The groups' objectives in Iraq differ from those in "other places like in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or in Lebanon," he said.

In Lebanon, Shiite suicide bombers helped drive U.S., British, French, Italian and Israeli troops out of the country with a series of attacks in the early 1980s. Sunni Palestinian suicide bombers have attacked in Israel and the Palestinian territories in an effort to loosen Israel's grip on what they say are Arab lands.

Most experts say that while the American presence in Iraq has radicalized Muslims, withdrawing the troops may not stem the number of suicide attacks, at least not right away.

Extremist groups in Iraq have a common goal of expelling foreign occupiers and destabilizing what they see as a U.S.-controlled government, Pape said. But if the Americans withdraw, insurgent organizations probably will engage in a bloody power struggle, he added.

"If we stay, that tends to encourage people to flock to Iraq," Hafez said. "Leaving will mean genocidal violence for the Iraqi people. It will mean a failed Iraqi state. The jihadists will declare, 'We drove out America.' "



Please read that last line again libs! Maybe it'll sink in this time.

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