Pre-War Planning Failure

In National Resistance I speculated that we could rally Sunnis against the Islamist foreign jihadis in a national resistance to these foreigners despoiling their country with suicide bombings and car bombs that kill lots of Iraqis. I thought this would be possible because the Baathists had made a mistake in allying with the Islamists a year ago. By doing so they forfeited the ability to portray their fight as a national resistance to US forces.

It seems that the Baathists are starting to realize that allying with the foreign killers has hurt them:

Osama bin Laden has vowed to turn Iraq into the front line of his war against the United States, but Iraqi insurgents seem worried that he's out to hijack their rebellion.

This of course helps us:

"We have concrete information that a sharp division is now broiling between" Iraqis waging a nationalist war and foreign Arabs spurred by militant Islam, said Mouwafak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi government's national security adviser. "They are more divided than ever."

Al-Rubaie said one reason was the perception among Iraqis that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant whom bin Laden endorsed as his deputy in Iraq, was of little help during the American onslaught on the Iraqi insurgent hotbed of Fallujah in November.

"Al-Zarqawi and his group fled Fallujah and let the Iraqis face the attack alone," al-Rubaie said in a telephone interview.

The Sunni Baathists want to lead a nationalist revolt to rule Iraq. The foreign jihadis want to bleed America in a campaign in a worldwide struggle to defeat America, and Iraq be damned.

Since Saddam planned on using jihadis long ago, I guess the Baathist pundits will be pretty savage in ridiculing his failure. He clearly should have planned more.