CNN: Brent Sadler reporting the Iraqis are not buying the al-Zarqawi story

[NNN0LHI]

He reported that the Iraqis are not happy with the US installed puppet government and that the number of Iraqi insurgents is increasing daily.

I will post a link to the CNN transcript in an hour or so when it appears on the CNN site.

Don

[ixion]

1. gee, big surprize there, eh?

Go figure. Iraqis don't like the thugs we left in charge to enforce the CPA's edicts.

Who'da thunk it? :eyes:

Think it'll get better there? If so, you must be a republican.

[Gloria]

2. Pessimists!!! Everything will be FINE after martial law is imposed....

(sarcasm off)

[cal04]

3. maybe they should give a little

brains to the republicans

Al-Zarqawi is then believed to have fled to Iraq in 2001 after losing a leg in a US missile strike on his Afghan base.

US officials argue it was at al-Qaida's behest that he moved to Iraq and established links with Ansar al-Islam - a group of Kurdish Islamists.

There is even speculation that al-Zarqawi was killed during a US attack on an Ansar al-Islam base last year.

Death speculation

Arab commentator Abd al-Bari Atwan says it is quite possible that al-Zarqawi is now dead.

He told Aljazeera.net: "There is no real proof that he is alive. If he is supposedly moving around freely in Iraq, why haven't Iraqis spoken about him? He can't be that difficult to recognise with his wooden leg."

http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=36782

[annxburns]

4. I was really afraid of this ....

....

Everyone in the right wing punditville was saying how the handover was going to make everything all better. The problem is now Sunni Iraqis look around and there is no buffer between them and the Shias and the Kurds. In a weird way, the CPA united the Iraqis against a common foe. Now they impose marshal law and you get a growing insurgency. Now it is not a fight against the Americans - it is a fight Sunni vs. Shia vs. Kurds. Something that has been going on for 1000s of years.

And our poor troops, the poor bastards, are caught in the middle.

[0007]

5. BTW, how are those military installations and air bases coming along?

[maddezmom]

6. here's a link: AP: Iraq Insurgency Larger Than Thought

By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Contrary to U.S. government claims, the insurgency in Iraq (news - web sites) is led by well-armed Sunnis angry about losing power, not foreign fighters, and is far larger than previously thought, American military officials say.

The officials told The Associated Press the guerrillas can call on loyalists to boost their forces to as high as 20,000 and have enough popular support among nationalist Iraqis angered by the presence of U.S. troops that they cannot be militarily defeated.


That number is far larger than the 5,000 guerrillas previously thought to be at the insurgency's core. And some insurgents are highly specialized — one Baghdad cell, for instance, has two leaders, one assassin, and two groups of bomb-makers.


Although U.S. military analysts disagree over the exact size, the insurgency is believed to include dozens of regional cells, often led by tribal sheiks and inspired by Sunni Muslim imams.

~snip~
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=6&u=/ap/20040709/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_insurgency

[leesa]

7. Neither are we.

[unfrigginreal]

8. "Iraqis are not happy with the US installed puppet government"

I know just how they feel.

[movonne]

9. I know how they feel too. God help us if we don't get this administration

out!!!

[flordehinojos]

10. Perhaps Bush will have to come up with better fiction!

Perhaps Bush and his criminal band of Iraqi occupiers will have to come up with better fiction to convince Iraqis that the United States is no longer an occupying force in Iraq.}(

[NNN0LHI]

11. Link to Sadlers report

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0407/09/nfcnn.00.html

<snip>LIN: Brent, but the fact is Zarqawi and his people are still operating at will inside of Fallujah, where U.S. forces have withdrawn. Does Iraqis -- Iraq's new prime minister, Allawi, does he have a plan in terms of tamping down the insurgency inside of Fallujah or, is he going to simply just -- just ignore it and allow the terrorists to operate at will?

SADLER: No, there's no doubt whatsoever that in the minds of the interim government and their supporters among the multinational forces that there "will be no safe haven in Fallujah," and "no safe haven anywhere else in Iraq," for that matter. But what the government is trying to do is build up intelligence capability to have Iraqi intelligence feeding the Iraqi intelligence service and then using the U.S. firepower arsenal of weapons in support if that's needed.

And that's part of the strategy, because since the handover of sovereignty some two weeks ago to the Iraqi interim government, they feel that Iraqis are -- if you like seeing the penny drop, that the coalition has moved away, we are in a transitional period here, and the government's claim to get more intelligence support. But we spent, I have to tell you, some time in a Sunni Muslim mosque in Baghdad earlier this day, and many Sunni Muslims were telling us after prayers this Friday that they felt that the whole Zarqawi episode was a fabrication, they said, of the United States, the multinational forces, and the Iraqi interim government to try and fool Iraqis into thinking that this one man was responsible for what's going on.

No, they say. This is an insurgency aimed at getting rid of what they still believe is a U.S. occupation of Iraq and a government, a puppet government that the U.S. has put in place. So they don't believe -- they don't buy the Zarqawi line at all -- Carol.

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