Scott Ritter: Facing the Enemy on the Ground

[reprehensor]

Facing the Enemy on the Ground

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The so-called Islamic resistance is led by none other than former Vice President Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, an ardent Iraqi nationalist, a Sunni Arab and a practicing member of the Sufi brotherhood, a society of Islamic mystics. His deputy is Rafi Tilfah, who headed the Directorate of General Security (DGS), an organization that had thoroughly penetrated Iraqi society with collaborators and informants during Saddam's regime.

As a former UN weapons inspector, I have personally inspected the headquarters of the DGS in Baghdad, as well as the regional DGS Headquarters in Tikrit. The rooms were full of files concerning those who were working with or on behalf of the DGS. There is not a person, family, tribe or Islamic movement in Iraq that the DGS does not know intimately – information that is an invaluable asset when coordinating and facilitating a popular-based resistance movement.

I also interacted with the former Director of the Special Security Organization, Hani al-Tilfah, on numerous occasions during 1997-98, when he was put in charge of riding roughshod over my inspections. He was also responsible for transferring many of his officers to Rafi's command, purging the DGS of old Ba'athist nationalists and replacing them with officers loyal to Saddam's new Islamic-Tribal vision of Iraq. Today he helps coordinate the operations of the Iraqi resistance using the very same officers.

Tahir Habbush headed the Iraqi Intelligence Service that perfected the art of improvised explosive devices and using them to carry out assassinations. In the months prior to the U.S.-led invasion, he was ordered to blend his agents back into the Iraqi population so as to avoid detection by any occupying force. The intelligence service agents were also told to infiltrate organizations actively opposed to Saddam Hussein, and thus most likely to play a leading role in any post-Saddam Iraqi government. These included both the Kurdish and Shi'ite opposition parties.

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[NMDemDist2]

1. it's about time Ritter surfaced again

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Fourteen months into the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Hussein Kamal's testimony that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed in the summer of 1991 has taken on new relevance, given the fact that to date no WMD have been found.

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The Pentagon today speaks of a "marriage of convenience" between Islamic fundamentalists and former members of Saddam's Ba'athist regime, even speculating that the Islamists are taking over Ba'athist cells weakened by American anti-insurgency efforts.

Once again, the Pentagon has it wrong. U.S. policy in Iraq is still unable or unwilling to face the reality of the enemy on the ground.

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The strength of this anti-American resistance depends on how long the United States chooses to "stay the course" in Iraq. The calculus is quite simple: The sooner we bring our forces home, the weaker this movement will be. And, of course, the obverse is true: The longer we stay, the stronger and more enduring this by-product of Bush's elective war on Iraq will be.

There is no elegant solution to our Iraqi debacle. It is no longer a question of winning, but rather mitigating defeat.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. al-Duri a Sufi?

I have a question: what order? Sufism is not monolithic-there are hundreds of seperate Sufi orders, and the ones I am familiar with are not political. I would really be interested in knowing what Sufi order al-Duri belongs to.