One Utah

If thousands of people weren’t being killed, this would be funny. Our politicians can’t keep track of America’s many, ever-changing enemies in Iraq. President Bush has never made it very clear who we’re fighting. It’s “a combination of terrorists, elements of former regime criminals and sectarian militias,” he said in October 2006, but mostly the White House spokespeople talk about “al Qaeda.”

Senator John McCain is the worst offender, with a long history of being confused about al Qaeda, Iraq and Iran. In yesterday’s oversight hearings on Iraq, he misidentified al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) as a “sect of the Shiites.” Other people who ought to be in the know often get mixed up as well.

Just after the 2006 elections switched control of Congress to the Democrats, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, identified al Qaeda as a predominantly Shiite organization.

In yesterday’s hearings, Senator Barack Obama asked if the Iraqi government is directing the “special groups” belonging to Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army (he meant to say Iranian government). The Mahdi Army is firing 107 mm rockets at the seat of the Iraqi government in Baghdad’s Green Zone.

Even Senator Joe Biden, widely respected for his knowledge of foreign policy, messed up. He theorized that ”The Awakening,” made up of Sunnis, might decide to get into a civil war with Sunnis, presumably meaning Shiites.

I made a tentative stab at this last December, with an Iraq Glossary that listed a few names for the people commonly referred to in the Army as “the bad guys,” i.e. whoever is shooting at us this month. Of course, even most soldiers can’t really keep track. The website GlobalSecurity.org lists 35 Iraqi insurgent groups– which doesn’t include all the Sunni groups, the militias not fighting Americans, or the wide variety of criminal gangs.

As my contribution to “Islamofascist Awareness Week”, here’s my attempt at making an Iraq insurgency scorecard to help us sort out the situation up to now. The information comes from a variety of sources, since there’s no single authoritative source. For convenience, I’ve lumped the multiplicity of Sunni Arab insurgent groups together.

Although the Bush administration initially denied the existence of an Iraqi insurgency, the U.S. military realized they were fighting insurgents from day one. In 2003, the invasion forces on the ground were surprised at the lack of tank battles. They found themselves opposed mostly by irregulars in pickup trucks.

Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam), based in northern Iraq outside Saddam Hussein’s control, was the only significant Iraqi terrorist group prior to the invasion. It was loosely linked to al Qaeda, and later became the core of the franchise operation al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

Although listed on the scorecard for the sake of completeness, the Kurdish Peshmerga aren’t an insurgent force at all but the national army of Kurdistan, a de facto independent country. It’s prohibited to fly the Iraqi flag in this part of Iraq, although the Kurdish government does cooperate with Maliki’s government and the U.S. occupation.

Iraq Insurgency Scorecard

This entry was posted Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Barack Obama, Disaster, Iraq, John McCain, National Politics, Terrorism, This Blog, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.