http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1118-33.htmExcerpt (full length is long):
Mohammed's reasons for joining the resistance were mixed. It was partly because of the civilians being killed, partly because he believed that the Koran required Muslims to fight non-Muslim occupiers. He worried that the Americans would hand power over to the Shia majority, who had suffered far more under the last regime than had the Sunnis and who would, he feared, take revenge. He said that like most "good Muslims" he hated Saddam, but he doubted that the United States had come to liberate Iraq. It had been a strategic war, he thought, designed to threaten Syria and Iran and to protect Israel. In the end, his opposition had much to do with the simple idea of occupation: he just didn't like seeing foreign soldiers on his land. He was a bit of a Texan that way.
He said things like: "When we see the U.S. soldiers in our cities with guns, it is a challenge to us. America wants to show its power, to be a cowboy. . . . Bush wants to win the next election—that is why he is lying to the American people saying that the resistance is Al Qaeda. . . . I don't know a lot about political relations in the world, but if you look at history—Vietnam, Iraq itself, Egypt, and Algeria—countries always rebel against occupation. . . . The world must know that this is an honorable resistance and has nothing to do with the old regime. Even if Saddam Hussein dies we will continue to fight to throw out the American forces. We take our power from our history, not from one person."
Mohammed's group was preparing to blow up a train full of military equipment, and was waiting for the signal from an informer who worked with the Americans. As it turned out, the signal wouldn't come for another ten weeks, and I caught the aftermath on CNN. Crowds of men and boys were laughing and cheering and grabbing everything they could. It looked like a classic ghazu, the raid for booty that tribes have carried out on the Arabian peninsula since pre-Islamic times. Even Lawrence of Arabia led attacks like these—against the Turkish railway lines that ran across this desert during the First World War—but he didn't get so many computers.