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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: geode00 who wrote (172366)	10/14/2005 6:42:05 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) of 281500

That's completely wrong. There's an insurgency, there are jihadists, there are criminals and there are just fed up people. A tiny minority of these may believe in the 72 virgins or what not but the others don't. So where do you draw the lines between the insurgent groups? We have found "indications" (all I can say publicly) that former Regime elements are behind a lot of the activities, especially with regard to training and financing, given their Ba'thist connections in Syria. Many Ba'thist intelligence officers are serving in various leadership capacities with the Al Qai'da and Ansar Al Sunnah groups. And "indications" are that Syrian intelligence (or elements thereof) are providing support as well. One could opine that the Ba'thist see that, by cloaking themselves in Jihadist rhetoric, they can both influence and control the nature of the Jihadist insurgency as both share a common goal of disrupting the current government and embarrassing the US/Coalition forces to the point that they withdraw. Once that is achieved, the Ba'thists would quickly assert themselves and deal with the Salafists in a blood purge.. So yes.. depending upon how you look at it, there is a definite co-mingling of forces and short-term alliances of convenience. And that vacuum of power you refer to was exacerbated by the nature of the regime that previously ruled here. The Ba'thists and their political/military/intelligence/tribal apparatus controlled the country. So of course there's to be a power vacuum. We could fill it, temporarily, by dictating how the government should operate.. But we've made the smart decision of working to enable the various Iraqi interests to take over and create a system where they can resolve their differences peacefully. But that's going to take years.. Just as it took years for 13 sovereign states to decide that Confederate government wasn't sufficient and that they needed a consitution. And even then, it required a bill of rights for it to be accepted by all parties. Hawk

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