Al Qaeda in Iraq

[Abu Buckwheat]

Dave,

I picked up the same one. Sloppy labeling and equally sloppy analysis. I would bet that Goldfarb has never served a day in the US military but claims to be pro-war whatever that means.

Hey let me translate ... "Oh You nasty liberal conspirators really get to me ... why don't you guys go join the military and fight a war sometime! ... oh, wait a minute, Small Wars what?"

I have no idea who Bill Roggio or Michael Goldfarb are and really don't care. I am really too busy trying to get an Iraqi with a Steyr SSG sniper rifle to shoot zero on a new set of optics!

We have a war to fight and I am in it and intend to get in it further and deeper than a stop at the Burger King on Camp Victory.

Almost as if the gods were watching this analysis came out yesterday in the LA Times ... 0.7 percent of the captives in Iraq are foreign fighters. This all sounds .... soooo familiar! I think there is a book on it!

Al Qaeda in Iraq and its affiliate groups number anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 individuals, the senior U.S. military officer said. Iraqis make up the majority of members, facilitating attacks, indoctrinating, fighting, but generally not blowing themselves up. Iraqis account for roughly 10% of suicide bombers, according to the U.S. military.

Maybe we only fight the executve management:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-saudi15jul15,0,3818698,full.story?coll=la-home-world

[jcustis]

Alas, Malcolm Nance needs no apologists or supporters to rally to his side, as he can easily hold his own in any discussion of things Iraqi.

What grinds my gears is that there continues to be this amateurish high-brow sense of sniff, sniff "Oh yes my good boy. Unfortunately, it appears my analysis is better than your analysis." The grinding is worsened by my sense that Michael Goldfarb kicked off his slippers in his study, turned on his computer, and then proceeded to defecate out of his ears.

He would have been better served by registering at Lightfighter and conducting a bit of research into just who Malcolm Nance is, what he has done, and what he continues to do to this day. He might have paused for a moment and thought differently about insuating that Nance's writing is easily lumped into arguments submitted by the antiwar crowd. We didn't get that depth of reasearch, and for that I find his dreamy admiration of Bill Roggio lacking.

And as for Roggio himself, I am perplexed where his depth of analysis comes from. Is it from his vast embed experience and discussions with commanders and boots-on-the-ground troops? Is it from his lengthy briefings given by intelligence analysts and collectors (if so, by god they need to be kicked in the head)? Or perhaps it comes from his lengthy discussions with these "front groups" or local sheiks and imams he has met when off the FOB. I think it is solely the first group...and that's fine, but please don't belittle those of us with half a brain left. Roggio's claim vs. fact breakout is to me an exercise of the pot calling the kettle black because most of his facts are unsupported and sweeping generalizations. If you want to come at Nance, Roggio, you need to bring your A-game and spend some more time drafting a counterpoint article with some meat, depth, and supported facts so that I can truly decide.

I am slightly amused by this blurb from the beginning of Roggio's post:

Also this week, Malcolm Nance published an article at the Small Wars Journal claiming al Qaeda is being given too much credit for the violence in Iraq. In the article, titled "Al Qaeda in Iraq--Heroes, Boogeymen or Puppets?," Nance claims al Qaeda is but a bit player in the Iraqi insurgency and is largely controlled by the Baathist remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime. To Nance, al Qaeda is both a U.S. Boogeyman and Baathist Puppet.

If taken seriously, these theories are likely to have a significant impact on the political battle over the war in Iraq as it is played out back here in the States. I took a look at the major points advanced by Nance and found his argument to be unpersuasive.

C'mon Roggio...If you had followed the same advice I have for Goldfarb, you would have conducted some research and found out that Nance didn't just wake up one morning and say, "Gee, I think I should write a blog that attacks the administration's assumptions about AQI". You didn't and frankly, for this OIF veteran, your writing comes across as amateurish. Nance's analysis is so much deeper than that, and he forms this from a ton more time in the saddle...not while musing in his study. Do you really think he is trying to influence some political battle in the Beltway over Iraq? Do you really?

Perhaps we are all still being duped about the nature of AQ (in and out of Iraq), and perhaps Osama Bin Laden is lounging on a beach in Cuba, sipping on a Mojito. When I do read commentary or opinion on Iraq, I tend to side with folks who have moved through Baghdad's dark back streets low-profile and ready to inflict extreme violence on bad guys who need it. Then again, that's just me.

[Jedburgh]

CSIS, 16 Jul 07: Iraq’s Sunni Insurgents: Looking Beyond Al Qa’ida

...The US naturally focuses on Al Qa’ida because of 9/11 and the fact it poses a serious international threat. So do some Iraqi leaders, but largely because it is easier for them, particularly if they are Shi’ite, to blame as many of Iraqi’s problems on foreigners and Sunnis as possible. The reality is far more complex....

[Abu Buckwheat]

CSIS, 16 Jul 07: Iraq’s Sunni Insurgents: Looking Beyond Al Qa’ida

Wow well I got CSIS and Cordesman on my side

... now if only someone had written all of this up into a 412 page highly detailed open-source intelligence analysis and historical narrative from 2002 to 2007 that would be an ideal source on the insurgency ....

[Tom Odom]

... now if only someone had written all of this up into a 412 page highly detailed open-source intelligence analysis and historical narrative from 2002 to 2007 that would be an ideal source on the insurgency ....

Assuming they can actually read...

Most would not read it because it is too long....

But that would not stop them from saying it was incorrect

[tequila]

NEFA Foundation - State of the Sunni Insurgency, Aug 2007 (pdf). A good summary of the development of AQI and its political wing, the Islamic State in Iraq, and its subsequent falling out with the Islamic Army in Iraq / Reform & Jihad Front.

[tequila]

The Myth of AQI - Andrew Tilghman, Washington Monthly. Our own Abu Buckwheat features prominently in this article. Raises some very interesting questions on the size and reach of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Some highlights:

...
Even if the manpower and number of attacks attributed to AQI have been exaggerated—and they have—many observers maintain that what is uniquely dangerous about the group is not its numbers, but the spectacular nature of its strikes ... He points, as do many inside the administration, to the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara, a revered Shiite shrine, as a paramount example of AQI's outsize influence. President Bush has laid unqualified blame for the Samara bombing on al-Qaeda, and described the infamous incident—and ensuing sectarian violence—as a fatal tipping point toward the current unrest.
But is this view of AQI's vanguard role in destabilizing Iraq really true?

...

it remains unclear whether the original Samara bombing was itself the work of AQI. The group never took credit for the attack, as it has many other high-profile incidents. The man who the military believe orchestrated the bombing, an Iraqi named Haitham al-Badri, was both a Samara native and a former high-ranking government official under Saddam Hussein. (His right-hand man, Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, was also a former military intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein's army.) Key features of the bombing did not conform to the profile of an AQI attack. For example, the bombers did not target civilians, or even kill the Shiite Iraqi army soldiers guarding the mosque, both of which are trademark tactics of AQI. The planners also employed sophisticated explosive devices, suggesting formal military training common among former regime officers, rather than the more bluntly destructive tactics typical of AQI. Finally, Samara was the heart of Saddam's power base, where former regime fighters keep tight control over the insurgency. Frank "Greg" Ford, a retired counterintelligence agent for the Army Reserves, who worked with the Army in Samara before the 2006 bombing, says that the evidence points away from AQI and toward a different conclusion: "The Baathists directed that attack," says Ford.

and ...

... The first group that profits from an outsize focus on AQI are former regime elements, and the tribal chiefs with whom they are often allied. These forces are able to carry out attacks against Shiites and Americans, but also to shift the blame if it suits their purposes. While the U.S. military has recently touted "news" that Sunni insurgents have turned against the al-Qaeda terrorists in Anbar Province, there is little evidence of actual clashes between these two groups. Sunni insurgents in Anbar have largely ceased attacks on Americans, but some observers suggest that this development has less to do with vanquishing AQI than with the fact that U.S. troops now routinely deliver cash-filled duffle bags to tribal sheiks serving as "lead contractors" on "reconstruction projects." The excuse of fighting AQI comes in handy. "Remember, Iraq is an honor society," explains Juan Cole, an Iraq expert and professor of modern Middle Eastern studies at the University of Michigan. "But if you say it wasn't us—it was al-Qaeda—then you don't lose face ..."