then,
now,
US officials in talks with Iraqi insurgents: NYT
Sat Jan 7, 2006
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. officials have been talking with local Iraqi insurgent leaders to exploit a rift between homegrown insurgents and radical groups such as Al Qaeda, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
A Western diplomat who supports the talks told the Times that the Americans had opened face-to-face discussions with insurgents in the field, and were also communicating with senior insurgent leaders through intermediaries.
The diplomat said the goal was to take advantage of rifts in the insurgency, in particular those between local groups, whose main goal is to expel U.S. forces, and more radical groups like al Qaeda, which have alienated many Iraqis with violent campaigns that have resulted in mass killings of Iraqi civilians.
The diplomat said the talks were taking place "inside and outside Iraq" and began in the fall around the time of the referendum on the new Iraqi constitution on October 15, the Times said. While U.S. officials have made contact with insurgent groups in the past, the diplomat said the more recent contacts were far more significant.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-01-07T103911Z_01_MOL724964_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-INSURGENCY.xml&archived=FalseSo, Bush wants to make a distinction between terrorists and insurgents, claiming, as this diplomat does, that only al-Qaeda is killing Iraqi civilians and US soldiers. Bush's boys made that distinction earlier last year. From the Sunday Times of London:
US 'in talks with Iraq rebels' June 26, 2005
"After weeks of delicate negotiation involving a former Iraqi minister and senior tribal leaders, a small group of insurgent commanders apparently came face to face with four American officials seeking to establish a dialogue with the men they regard as their enemies.
The talks on June 3 were followed by a second encounter 10 days later, according to an Iraqi who said that he had attended both meetings. Details provided to The Sunday Times by two Iraqi sources whose groups were involved indicate that further talks are planned in the hope of negotiating an eventual breakthrough that might reduce the violence in Iraq."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1669601,00.htmlI actually think it's smart to talk to some of these groups who we call insurgents. Other countries have. That's why they seem to be more successful in getting their hostages out. They actually have dialog with these groups. The obvious question is why we alienated the Batthists in the first place, disbanded them from the army and kept them from political posts? With this administration, it's always a breath away from capitulating on their own strident rhetoric and positions.
I just wonder, who gets to decide whether a group is terrorist or insurgent? Hard to imagine that the distinction falls far outside of our own political prism. Hard to imagine that our perspective on this matches the will and intention of the Iraqis Bush professes to want to take control over their own governance. So much meddling. So much fudging. Hard to imagine that the chaos that we're dealing with wasn't in Bush's plan from the start.
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