Don't believe the hype

Got this little gem from the New York Times edition of August 25th, 2007. It seems that the papers are finally starting to report on what motivates Iraqis to blow up American and Coalition forces. The gist of the story is that the surge is causing more Iraqis to be detained in Coalition-run prisons. The military has known this for some time now; I am just amazed that the so-called "Liberal News Media" hasn't call the Derelict in Chief on this:

"Nearly 85 percent of the detainees in custody are Sunni Arabs, the minority faction in Iraq that ruled the country under the government of Saddam Hussein; the other detainees are Shiites, the officers say...

"...[M]ilitary officers said that of the Sunni detainees, about 1,800 claim allegiance to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown extremist group that American intelligence agencies have concluded is foreign-led. About 6,000 more identify themselves as takfiris, or Muslims who believe some other Muslims are not true believers. Such believers view Shiite Muslims as heretics.

"Those statistics would seem to indicate that the main inspiration of the hard-core Sunni insurgency is no longer a desire to restore the old order — a movement that drew from former Baath Party members and security officials who had served under Mr. Hussein — and has become religious and ideological.

"But the officers say an equally large number of Iraqi detainees say money is a significant reason they planted roadside bombs or shot at Iraqi and American-led forces.

“'Interestingly, we’ve found that the vast majority are not inspired by jihad or hate for the coalition or Iraqi government — the vast majority are inspired by money,' said Capt. John Fleming of the Navy, a spokesman for the multinational forces’ detainee operations. The men are paid by insurgent leaders. 'The primary motivator is economic — they’re angry men because they don’t have jobs,' he said. 'The detainee population is overwhelmingly illiterate and unemployed. Extremists have been very successful at spreading their ideology to economically strapped Iraqis with little to no formal education.'

"But the detention system itself often serves as a breeding ground for the insurgency and a training opportunity for those who, after they are released, may attack Iraqi or American-led forces, military officers say.

"According to statistics supplied by the headquarters of Task Force 134, the American military unit in charge of detention operations in Iraq, there are about 280 detainees from countries other than Iraq. Of those, 55 are identified as Egyptian, 53 as Syrian, 37 as Saudi, 28 as Jordanian and 24 as Sudanese."

Where do I start? They Iraqi men are angry because they have no jobs? They are illiterate and unemployed? And we have KBR here, bringing in Pakistanis and Indians and others from all over the Third World, doing manual labor (for next to nothing) while the Iraqis have no jobs--in their own country? Wouldn't that make you a little bit angry? The unemployment rate in this country is over 40% but we import people to work at the bases. Maybe the locals would be more trustworthy and we wouldn't need to bring folks from other countries if they sensed that we were here to help them and not exploit them!

And even better--the American people are told that, "we're fighting them over here so we don't fight them at home." Of the 24,000 detainees in this country who are being held for attacking Coalition forces, Task Force 134 can positively identify exactly 280 that are non-Iraqi. Wonderful. We're going to this expense to fight the equivalent of two rifle companies over here. And--oh, by the way--we don't have any idea how many people are being held by the Iraqi government. "According to John Sifton, a researcher with Human Rights Watch...[T]he American military in Iraq will not provide numbers for detainees held by the government of Iraq.

“'The allegations of abuse are far worse for Iraqi facilities than for those detainees in U.S. custody,' he said. 'It is difficult to know the Iraqi detainee population. There are both official and unofficial Iraqi detention systems.'”

That is just peachy. This lying has got to stop, folks. Write your reps in Washington; I have. They can ignore us when we do it individually; they can't if we do it collectively. See ya 'round...