The recent video released by al-Qaeda in Iraq of Zarqawi has stirred up new interest in getting rid of this little fat rodent. Many in Iraq resent his foreign interference and murderous rampage.

Christian Science Monitor : "Before, I thought there was no Zarqawi, he was just a fiction. But now I believe in him. He's really out there,'' says Thalib Jabbar, a businessman in Baghdad. "Zarqawi wants to show his power and frighten people. But in reality, he's the one who should be afraid. We want him dead."

That's a common sentiment among many ordinary Iraqis, one played on by Iraqi officials Wednesday who condemned Zarqawi as a foreigner trying to destroy their country. Their strong response highlights the risk such a video poses for Zarqawi: The effort to show his strength within the insurgency also puts a foreign face on the movement, leaving an opening for his opponents to appeal to national unity.

In his video, the powerful and chipmunk-cheeked Zarqawi said the Iraqi government, "whether made up of the hated Shiites or the secular Zionist Kurds or the collaborators among the Sunnis, will be tools of the crusaders and a poison dagger in the heart of the Islamic nation."

The Jawa Report has full video and transcripts here.

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Pretty wicked cool. It's about time the Royals did more than blather on about how Islam is peaceful.

Daily Mail:

Prince Harry has threatened to quit the Army if commanders refuse to send him to the front line.

He told senior officers before recently passing out of Sandhurst as a Second Lieutenant: “If I am not allowed to join my unit in a war zone, I will hand in my uniform.”

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Michael Fumento describes a firefight in Ramadi. It's good to know there are still some reporters like Fumento operating outside the Green Zone.

Fumento:

As soon as everybody was out of the houses the bad guys hit us big time. Machine gun and rifle fire seemed to come from every direction. In part, perhaps, this was because of sound reverberations off the walls and possibly it was because it was coming from every direction. Americans tossed several smoke canisters to conceal us as we crossed the first wide street, but since the Mooj tend to fire wildly anyway I'm not sure how much it helped. All they do is point their weapons in our general direction and squeeze off as many rounds as they can. But a haphazardly-fired bullet when it hits you has the same impact as an expertly aimed one.

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"That little missile was a cool toy Muscab, [update: Confederate Yankee has pic of the missiles, one of which appears to be a Qassam] but get a load of my toy!”

CNN Bahgdad Wednesday 04/26/06: Rumsfeld was greeted at Baghdad International Airport by Gen. George Casey, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, before they then went to the U.S. Embassy for a one-on-one meeting.

The secretary arrived in Iraq on a C-17 military transport.

Earlier this week, PM-designate al-Maliki said he thinks U.S. troops could begin withdrawing in 18 months or less if his country's security forces get up to speed.

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What impresses me the most is the sheer determination he shows in the face of terrorist murder.

Iraq The Model : Last week our little and peaceful family was struck by the tragic loss of one of its members in a savage criminal act of assassination. The member we lost was my sister's husband who lived with their two little children in our house.

He was a brilliant young doctor with a whole future awaiting him, the couple were the top graduates in their branch of specialty. They had to travel abroad to get their degrees and the war started while they were there but months after Saddam fallen they decided to come back to help rebuild the country and serve their people.

The terrorists and criminals are targeting all elements of life and they target anyone who wants to do something good for this countryÂ…They think by assassinating one of us they could deter us from going forward but will never succeed, they can delay us for years but we will never go back and abandon our dream.

We have vowed to follow the steps of our true martyrs and we will raise the new generation to continue the march, these children of today are the hope and the future.

What a difference between those who work to preserve life and those who work to end itÂ…it's terrorism and crime and there are no other words to describe these acts.

Also see Hyscience.

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I've just been absolutely enthralled by Mike Totten's travelogue describing his journey to Kurdistan through Turkey. Today's post is the best one:

The whole thing was just weird. I donÂ’t quite know how to convey how surreal it is to leave a country that maybe, just maybe, might join the European Union and enter a country that is a poster-child for wrenching war-torn catastrophe and have everything around me dramatically improve all at once. But that's how it goes these days when you cross into Iraq from Turkey. Even though Sean had never been there before, he, like me, breathed a sigh of relief at our arrival in a tranquil place at peace with itself.

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Has the leader of al Qaeda's branch in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, been fired by Ayman al-Zawahiri? Very interesting, indeed. Not nearly as interesting, though, as it would be to hear that he's dead.

I heard about this while I was gone, but had not time to blog it. From the Globabl Terrorism Analysis desk of the Jamestown Foundation:

Media reports during the past week have announced that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—al-Qaeda's chief in Iraq—has been "replaced" or "demoted" from the leadership of Iraq's Sunni resistance coalition (Daily Star, April 3; al-Bawaba, April 2). The stories have said that al-Zarqawi was removed as "the result of several mistakes he made," including for taking "the liberty of speaking in the name of the Iraqi people" and for "targeting the Islamic states neighboring Iraq, particularly Jordan" [1]. On April 2, Jordan-based Sunni cleric Sheikh Hudayf Azzam—the son of the famous cleric, mujahideen leader, and Osama bin Laden-mentor Abdullah Azzam—told the journal al-Bawaba that "al-Zarqawi bowed to the orders two weeks ago [March 15-18] and was replaced by Iraqi national Abdullah bin Rashed al-Baghdadi." Azzam said that al-Zarqawi's "role has been limited to military action," but stressed that al-Zarqawi approved the change in his status and "has returned to where he should be as a man who came to champion the Iraqi cause" (al-Bawaba, April 2; al-Arabiyah, April 2)....

This week's reports that al-Zarqawi has been "demoted" likewise squares perfectly with the intimations al-Zawahiri sent him that there may be debilitating "sensitivities" over a non-Iraqi's leadership of the Iraqi resistance. Without even a whimper, al-Zarqawi allowed himself to be publicly rebuked—"he made many political mistakes"—moved to a lesser post, and was chastised for "speaking in the name of the Iraqi resistance and people." The manner in which al-Zarqawi's change in status was handled left the clear impression—as al-Zawahiri said would be desirable—that the resistance movement is an Iraqi insurgency, headed by Iraqis, and conducted in Iraqi interests. Foreign mujahideen are welcomed to support the Iraqi insurgents, but al-Zarqawi, by "bowing" to Iraqi wishes, publicly proved that they are playing a subordinate role....

While it is too soon to know how al-Zarqawi's new status "as a soldier of the resistance" will impact the Iraq insurgency, a strong argument can be made that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have reached out and persuaded al-Zarqawi to change his behavior in a way that will benefit al-Qaeda (al-Quds al-Arabi, April 4). Historically, al-Qaeda has been welcomed in Islamic insurgencies around the world precisely because it wanted to contribute force multipliers—military cadre, media and financial expertise, materiel, logistics assistance—and did not try to supplant local leadership. Based on the foregoing, al-Zarqawi now seems ready to play this traditional al-Qaeda role, which is likely to bring greater unity to Iraq's Sunni resistance. The foregoing also ought to give pause to those Western analysts who have concluded that bin laden and al-Qaeda are largely yesterday's news, an isolated, cowering organization unable to influence—let alone direct—the affairs of the many fronts of the worldwide anti-U.S. Islamic insurgency.

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Bush lied, McHaliburton, Amerikkka, etc. Hitchens:

In February 1999, Zahawie left his Vatican office for a few days and paid an official visit to Niger, a country known for absolutely nothing except its vast deposits of uranium ore. It was from Niger that Iraq had originally acquired uranium in 1981, as confirmed in the Duelfer Report. In order to take the Joseph Wilson view of this Baathist ambassadorial initiative, you have to be able to believe that Saddam Hussein's long-term main man on nuclear issues was in Niger to talk about something other than the obvious. Italian intelligence (which first noticed the Zahawie trip from Rome) found it difficult to take this view and alerted French intelligence (which has better contacts in West Africa and a stronger interest in nuclear questions). In due time, the French tipped off the British, who in their cousinly way conveyed the suggestive information to Washington. As everyone now knows, the disclosure appeared in watered-down and secondhand form in the president's State of the Union address in January 2003....

However, the waters have since become muddied, to say the least. For a start, someone produced a fake document, dated July 6, 2000, which purports to show Zahawie's signature and diplomatic seal on an actual agreement for an Iraqi uranium transaction with Niger. Almost everything was wrong with this crude forgery—it had important dates scrambled, and it misstated the offices of Niger politicians. In consequence, IAEA Chairman Mohammed ElBaradei later reported to the U.N. Security Council that the papers alleging an Iraq-Niger uranium connection had been demonstrated to be fraudulent.

But this doesn't alter the plain set of established facts in my first three paragraphs above. The European intelligence services, and the Bush administration, only ever asserted that the Iraqi regime had apparently tried to open (or rather, reopen) a yellowcake trade "in Africa." It has never been claimed that an agreement was actually reached. What motive could there be for a forgery that could be instantly detected upon cursory examination?

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Rob at Left Wing Lies has created this graphic way to keep track of the number of lives saved by the Coalition invasion of Iraq. Using figures from The Weekly Standard and Iraqibodycount.net, Rob calculates that 174 fewer Iraqis die every day since Saddam was toppled.

Also posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto.

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Qubad Talabani, son of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, spoke to University of South Carolina students yesterday, advocating less centralized government in Iraq as the answer to some of his nation's current problems. Townhall:

Other parts of the country are looking at forming similar regions so they can govern themselves with as much autonomy as possible over their own affairs, thus reducing the powers of the central government. By reducing such powers, you will reduce the different communitiesÂ’ insecurities because of the mistrust that exists today."

He adds, "At the moment, Baghdad is the prize and everybody is fighting over it. We need to reduce the relevance of that prize so that we reduce the level of tension throughout Iraq."

The mistrust and tension, Talabani says, is a part of Saddam HusseinÂ’s legacy, pitting one community against the other, as well as instilling fear from cruelties committed by the former regime against all segments of the population.

"My own region, Kurdistan, was decimated by Saddam," Talabani says. "He destroyed about 4,000 villages, killed about 200,000 people, and used chemical and biological weapons in over 250 incidences – primarily against civilians."

Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, most Kurds believed themselves to be the only victims of SaddamÂ’s brutality. "But when the regime fell, we realized that Iraqi Arabs were also victims," Talabani says. "We recovered hundreds-of-thousands of bodies in mass graves across the country, many of which were dedicated to children three to six-years-old. Most had been experimented on by the regime. I cannot describe the carnage and brutality in a way that you would be able to comprehend just how bad it really was."

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Showing the sort of initiative that should be coming from an alert mainstream press, Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters has confirmed the translation of a captured Iraqi document asking for volunteers for a "Suicide Mission" against "American Interests".

Fearing that critics would claim the document had been mistranslated because the original translation had been done for the Free Republic, Morrissey hired two independent translators to confirm the original. Captain Ed has posted the results, both of which confirm the original translation:

The top secret letter 2205 of the Military Branch of Al Qadisya on 4/3/2001 announced by the top secret letter 246 from the Command of the military sector of Zi Kar on 8/3/2001 announced to us by the top secret letter 154 from the Command of Ali Military Division on 10/3/2001 we ask to provide that Division with the names of those who desire to volunteer for Suicide Mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American Interests and according what is shown below to please review and inform us.

The mainstream media has yet to report the existence of this document.

Also posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto and Vince Aut Morire.

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How else to explain the grossly offensive way that Washington Post writer Thomas E. Ricks chose to phrase his "exposé" disclosing that [gasp] the American military would like Iraqis to think badly of brutal terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? [emphasis added to excerpt below]

The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Ricks is likewise outraged that the US "home audience" is part of the "propaganda operation". Horrors! Everyone knows that only mainstream journalists are allowed to target American citizens with propaganda. Actually, Ricks' outrage seems to be jealousy that a New York Times reporter, Dexter Filkins, was given a scoop that Ricks missed out on. Since it wasn't given to Ricks it's not a "tip", it's a "leak".

In his zeal to damage the Bush administration, reporter Ricks has betrayed his profession, as well as his country.

Also posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto and Vince Aut Morire.

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Gateway Pundit has a great post showing reaction to yesterdayÂ’s bombings. It seems they dislike al-Qaeda.

Gatewaypundit : As the media paints a picture of Civil War, the terrorists in Iraq continue to murder innocent civilians. The worst massacre of the year on Friday was blamed on Al Zarqawi and his thugs and NOT on sectarian division.

After the suicide bombings yesterday at the Buratha mosque in Baghdad that killed over 70 people, Shiites protested for unity today in Iraq..

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Gratitude:

World opinion says that this war was illegal because the Coalition found no weapons of mass destruction. What have been found, however, are heaps of bodies, buried in mass graves, which would not have been discovered otherwise. Five-hundred thousand people — men, women and children — had been executed or buried alive. Saddam Hussein and many of his henchmen were captured alive and, in contrast to the way they treated people, are being treated humanely. Saddam Hussein's 35-year war against the population of Iraq cost over two million people their lives, and this campaign is not over yet. Now, however, we are no longer alone in this war. We have the United States on our side. We know that we can win this struggle.

Posted by: Vinnie at 11:54 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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At some point even the term homicide-bomber becomes too PC to describe the evil. Let's call these people what they really are: mass murderers. I wonder if the U.N. will look into these clear violations of the Geneva Conventions?

When American soldiers kill terrorists operating out of a mosque and holding hostages there, they are accused of all sorts of vile things. But when mass-murdering Muslims proudly and purposefully target civilians at mosques, it is simply part of 'sectarian violence'. Our neutral media at work.

L.A. Times:

At least 69 people were killed and 130 injured today when three suicide bombers, at least one of whom was a woman, blew themselves up in and around the Bratha mosque, one of the most important Shiite mosques in the capital.

Rescuers, including Iraqi security forces and volunteers, sorted among the gore of severed body parts to find and treat the living.

Asked how he knew a woman was involved, a mosque worker pointed at a body part that still had pantyhose attached. "There she is," he said.

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Al Jazeera reported on Sunday that Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the brutal Jordanian head of al Qaeda in Iraq, has been "sacked" by the "Iraqi resistance's high command" and replaced with an Iraqi national. Zarqawi is said to be relegated to a military role.

From the article:

Iraq's resistance has replaced Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as political head of the rebels, the son of Osama bin Laden's mentor has said in Jordan.

Hudayf Azzam, 35, who claims close contacts with the fighters, said on Sunday: "The Iraqi resistance's high command asked Zarqawi to give up his political role and replaced him with an Iraqi, because of several mistakes he made.

"Zarqawi's role has been limited to military action. Zarqawi bowed to the orders two weeks ago and was replaced by Iraqi national Abdullah bin Rashed al-Baghdadi."

However, the story's credibility is somewhat sketchy because both Hudayf Azzam and Abdullah bin Rashed al-Baghdadi were virtually unknown until Sunday.

Also posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto.

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