Sometimes the Pentagon News briefs take you by surprise. For example, in the middle of a self-justifying war, it's tough to believe they'd come up with this jewel:
The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.
You know, I had no idea that 'Al Qaeda in Iraq' was our most lethal 'adversary', I thought it was the insurgency consisting of thousands and thousands of pissed off Iraqis, not a bunch of Saudi imports with bad attitudes. Anyhow, here's quick test to refresh our memory about some old things.
Choose which was the LATEST excuse for invading Iraq
- WMD
- Liberate poor Iraqis from the evil tyranny of Saddam Hussein (a tyranny we happily supported for years, by the way--see Donald Rumsfeld, Reagan)
- Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and 'terrorists' in general (whatever that word means anymore), who notably developed only AFTER we invaded Iraq
If you choose answer 3 you would be correct. That is our country's latest offering of a rationale for illegally invading and occupying Iraq and murdering some 650,000 civilians and displacing millions more.
Now, what's surprising about this is that the Pentagon propaganda arm has decided to declare victory over it's own raison d'etre in Iraq. Only, that leaves it no excuse to be in Iraq. Does that mean (holding breath in waves of hopefulness and joy) we'll soon be actually LEAVING Iraq?
Sadly, no.
But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. At the same time, the intelligence community, and some in the military itself, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown great resilience in the past.
"I think it would be premature at this point," a senior intelligence official said of a victory declaration over AQI, as the group is known. Despite recent U.S. gains, he said, AQI retains "the ability for surprise and for catastrophic attacks." Earlier periods of optimism, such as immediately following the June 2006 death of AQI founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air raid, not only proved unfounded but were followed by expanded operations by the militant organization.
Of course, we should note, that the threat presented by Al Qaeda in Iraq or AQI as the military loves to call them, is pretty much an overblown ruse, dreamt up by, yes, you guessed it, the Pentagon. Here's Andrew Tilghman on the nature of the 'threat'...
After a strike, the military rushes to point the finger at al-Qaeda in Iraq, even when the actual evidence remains hazy and an alternative explanation—raw hatred between local Sunnis and Shiites—might fit the circumstances just as well. The press blasts such dubious conclusions back to American citizens and policy makers in Washington, and the incidents get tallied and quantified in official reports, cited by the military in briefings in Baghdad. The White House then takes the reports and crafts sound bites depicting AQI as the number one threat to peace and stability in Iraq. (In July, for instance, at Charleston Air Force Base, the president gave a speech about Iraq that mentioned al-Qaeda ninety-five times.)
The real numbers are probably grossly exaggerated...
When turning to the question of manpower, military officials told the New York Times in August that of the roughly 24,500 prisoners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq (nearly all of whom are Sunni), just 1,800—about 7 percent—claim allegiance to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Moreover, the composition of inmates does not support the assumption that large numbers of foreign terrorists, long believed to be the leaders and most hard-core elements of AQI, are operating inside Iraq. In August, American forces held in custody 280 foreign nationals—slightly more than 1 percent of total inmates.
The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which arguably has the best track record for producing accurate intelligence assessments, last year estimated that AQI's membership was in a range of "more than 1,000." When compared with the military's estimate for the total size of the insurgency—between 20,000 and 30,000 full-time fighters—this figure puts AQI forces at around 5 percent. When compared with Iraqi intelligence's much larger estimates of the insurgency—200,000 fighters—INR's estimate would put AQI forces at less than 1 percent. This year, the State Department dropped even its base-level estimate, because, as an official explained, "the information is too disparate to come up with a consensus number."
How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization."
Don't believe the hype. The Pentagon just needed some favorable press. They're busy defeating an adversary whose greatest presence loomed largely in their own propaganda.