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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bruce L who wrote (22255)	11/8/2004 5:26:46 AM
From: energyplay	Respond to of 23153

Hi Bruce - I doubt if you'll see that data for a while. I would expect it to be closely held. The US has a long term interest in seeing many of the experienced foreign fighters enter Iraq, and then be killed or captured. A quick victory might stop the flow of foreign fighters. US policy might also be designed to get rid of large numbers of old Saddam loyalists - which a quick victory might obstruct. This could make life easier for the new Iraqi security forces, if the hard liners have been hit hard - There's a war of attrition, but who's attriting who ?

To: Bruce L who wrote (22255)	11/8/2004 11:44:10 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23153

Hi Bruce. I doubt you'll ever get really good numbers on the number or percentage of foreign fighters in Iraq. I've seen it repeated many times that the numbers are small. My sources were news articles, testimony at hearings on c-span and PBS reporting. I've seen it from our own military and from Iraqi militants talking to journalists. The small percentages may not add up to a small impact, however. I've read that the foreign fighters are more likely to conduct suicide bombings and that they came with some advanced knowledge of tactics for terrorism. I suspect that our government could give us a better idea of what is going on with respect to who is fighting us and why, but that they don't because it is not politically advantageous to acknowledge that there is a genuine, nationalistic, insurgency branch of opposition that we're fighting. I do know that the government's admitted guesses on the number of insurgents keeps moving up. I suspect that over time the number will get higher as insurgencies usually grow in those countries where the occupation persists, the deaths mount and the occupation force becomes more and more alienated from the local population. I wonder at our current tactics in Fallujah. I suspect that when we get through taking Fallujah we'll have taken a fairly empty city and we'll then occupy a place seething with hatred and continually dangerous to the occupiers. It would be stupid for the insurgents to spend their lives "making a stand" in Fallujah although some will likely martyr themselves in resisting because young men don't always do non-stupid things and because they need their "Alamo." I note one poster suggested that we were deliberately leaving the borders open and allowing the insurgency in order to draw in terrorists and Saddam loyalists so we could then destroy them. It amazes me that human beings can be so persistent in finding ways to see a silver lining in a storm cloud. The fact is that we will never be able to seal the borders and stop the jihadists from entering unless and until the Iraqi people powerfully turn against the foreign fighters. In addition, the "Saddam loyalists" label that some put on the Iraqi fighters is incorrect. Many of them are, by religion and historically, the same people that Saddam was killing and most of the others would never support Saddam if we left and they had a choice. Why is it so hard for some to recognize that all of the spin we hear on how we're "helping" the Iraqi people does not comport with what we're actually doing there? It does, however, comport with our creating a situation that will require that we remain in Iraq for, in the early words of Rice, a "generational" commitment. We'll see how well we do in creating and fostering an environment where that is possible. I predict we'll pull back into enclaves that we can defend over the next 18 months and then stay for as long as we can find any Kurdish, Shiite or Sunni invitation, or as long as we can claim our presence is necessary to "protect" some segment of the Iraqi population. In the meantime there are countries like China, N. Korea and Iran that are happy to see our attention, our troops and our money disappearing into Iraq. I imagine that the Bin Ladins of the world aren't too unhappy as they harvest the political fruits of our occupation either. Maybe someday, someone, somewhere, will find a basis for asserting a net gain to America from our tremendous expenditures of political credit, finances and human souls there, but I have great difficulty seeing it. Ed