Thursday, February 14, 2008

In Pursuit

The Sunni Arab jihadis are on the run in Iraq:


Years of U.S. intel work are paying off, as more and more senior terrorist leaders are being identified, and found. This has caused most of the al Qaeda leader ships to flee the country, taking their cash with them. The U.S. is putting additional pressure on Syria to give up terrorists who flee in that direction. The Iraqi Sunni Arab terrorists groups, who comprise over 90 percent of the people fighting the government, and making attacks on U.S. troops, are also in big trouble. The leaders of these groups are hoping for some kind of amnesty before they get caught. Capture can be delayed for a while by bribing the local police and army units. Meanwhile, the terrorists are suffering a severe cash flow problem. The al Qaeda contributions are gone, and most of the money coming from foreigners has dried up. The Iraqi "resistance" is seen as broken, and no one wants to support a lost cause.


Would additional pressure include the killing of Imad Mughniyeh?

Funny how fighting and winning isn't just creating more jihadis. As I've long argued, only fighting ineffectively creates more jihadis. Wipe them from one end of Iraq to the other and even the densest jihadi gets it--or is just dead and so their level of understanding becomes irrelevant.

Their losses may also explain why the jihadis in Iraq are going back to basics in generating support in the Middle East:


The purported leader of al-Qaida's affiliate in Iraq called in a new posting on a militant Web site on Thursday for attacks on Israel and proposed that Iraq's territory be a "launching pad" to seize Jerusalem.


Yeah, it's really always been just about the Jews. Strategypage noted this trend last month. The glory of blowing away Iraqi children with mentally ill Iraqi women and other such fun tactics the last several years kind of obscured their true reason for invading Iraq, eh?