[antimedia] antimedia: I'm going to have to rethink....

[antimedia at lists.powerblogs.com]

Posted by antimedia:
I'm going to have to rethink....
http://www.antimedia.us/posts/1144205171.shtml


   ....my understanding of the "insurgency". Previously I thought that
   many of the beheadings and executions (shot in the back of the head)
   were the work of the Ba'athists and the suicide missions were almost
   exclusively the province of the "foreign fighters" (meaning Al Qaeda),
   but this section of the Iraq Perspectives Project report (page 71) has
   me rethinking that calculus.

     The Fedayeen Saddam also took part in the regime's terrorism
     operations, which they conducted inside Iraq, and at least planned
     for attacks in major Western cities. In a document dated May 1999,
     Uday Hussein ordered preparations for "special operations,
     assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols
     in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas (Kurdistan)."^48
     Other captured documents indicated that preparations for a
     regime-directed wave of terror, codenamed "Blessed July," against
     targets outside of Iraq were well underway. Evidence exists that
     the Fedayeen Saddam had already conducted a number of early
     operations, particularly against the Kurds and Shi'a. Evidence
     supporting this contention comes in a letter to Uday Hussein from a
     Fedayeen Saddam widow who requested help to secure her husband's
     pension benefits. According to the letter, her husband, a longtime
     operative with the security services, had died in July 2000
     carrying out a suicide operation for the Fedayeen Saddam against
     Kurdish opposition parties.^49
     In the final months before OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM, the Fedayeen
     Saddam actively began planning operations against the Coalition,
     including suicide missions aimed at crossing into Kuwait to
     "explode volcanoes under the feet of the invaders," if Coalition
     forces were to reach Baghdad.^50 While it appears that they never
     crossed into Kuwait, a number of Fedayeen Saddam suicide attacks
     did take place during the war.

   Given this information, I think it's likely that the numbers being
   given for Al Qaeda in Iraq (in the hundreds to low thousands) are
   likely correct. This means that much of the "insurgency" is made up of
   former Ba'athists and Fedayeen Saddam "dead-enders" who continue to do
   what they've been doing in Iraq for a number of years -- slaughter
   their fellow citizens.
   What a sad legacy Saddam has left his people.