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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (273514)	1/25/2010 9:27:46 PM
From: Hawkmoon	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

It seemed silly to have gone after Saddam when Osama and Afghanistan were more than enough to deal with Given the publicly available information I can see where you might draw that conclusion. But information that I saw during my time there suggested that Saddam had instructed his intelligence service (IIS) to support and coordinate with Jihadist groups to do what he was unable to do directly with his forces. There's considerable credibility to back the belief that the IIS was funding, training, and logistically supporting these groups, despite the fact that they were ideologically opposed to one another. But evidence that Saddam had been required to "cozy up" with the Salafist militants within his own borders are evidenced when he put "Allah Akhbar" on the supposedly secular flag of the country. We also discovered that a large percentage of former IIS and other internal security folks later became leaders (Amirs) inside the insurgent groups. One would think that these Salafists would naturally be hesitant to follow secular Ba'thist in a Jihad effort, but this was often the case. Thus, the question was whether the IIS was attempting to control AQ in Iraq for its own purposes, or whether these Salafist cadre had infiltrated the IIS. I personally subscribe to the latter. But I also look at it this way. If we wanted to draw out these Salafist militants, the best way to do was to overthrow Saddam and force them to fight for control over the historical seat of the Caliphate, Baghdad. If we wanted to send a message that Al Qaida could be neutralized, if not defeated on their own turf, it was in Iraq. Look at the borders of Iraq and see how many Arab countries neighbor it. Any democratic "bud" we can generate within the Iraqi population would naturally travel across these borders. Hawk