Summary: Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today: Is al Qeada in Iraq the same al Qaeda that Attacked America on 9-11?Who are we fighting? Download Subscribe Add Wizbang Podcast to iTunes Play clip. Is al Qeada in Iraq the same al Qaeda that Attacked America on 9-11? The press, politicians, intelligence services, and the military have been all over the news talking about Al Qeada in Iraq. The military has claimed that the most spectacularly violent attacks in Iraq have been originated by Al Qaeda in Iraq, or as the New York Times prefers to call it, al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. I've been listening to a lot of press conferences, talk shows, and blogger's conference calls over the past two weeks trying to get a better understanding of the role of al Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI. In today's podcast I'll show why the military believes that AQI is the biggest military and political threat in Iraq, what the group has done, how we have them on the run. I'll try to show the connection to the global al Qaeda network and what the battle in Iraq means in the Global War on Terror. I'll also show how the Democrats and their enablers in press are trying to minimize the connection between AQI and the al Qaeda who attacked us on 9/11. They fear that if the public believes they are part of the same network, the quest to get us out of Iraq as soon as possible will fail, and Americans will once again support the war.. To give you an example of that quest, here is Nate, a blogger writing at The Hollow Horn who points to articles that bolster his position. Titled, The Al Qaeda Myth, Nate writes:The president and his partisans keep harping on the presence of Al-Qaeda in Iraq as a reason for our continued involvement. There are a lot of problems with this claim. Articles in the New York Times and Time note most of my objections. First, there never was an Al-Qaeda in Iraq until we came. Second, it would be a bit of a stretch to suggest that this is the same Al-Qaeda that attacked the US five years ago. (It has been chastised by Zawahiri for its indiscriminate methods several times.) Third, it represents only a very small percentage of the Iraqi insurgency. Nate is mostly right that there was little active Al Qaeda presence in Iraq before the invasion in 2003. But just because they were not there before we invaded doesn't mean they are not part of the same network today. The bulk of the AQI network arrived after 2003. So what? Nate's third claim that AQI is a small percentage of the insurgents is technically correct, but it ignores the power of their "weapons of mass effect", as BG Robert H. Holmes, Deputy Director of Operations, U.S. Central Command, identified in a conference call recently. But I'm getting ahead of myself. From the NY Times article Nate refers to, we read:In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. "The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq," he said, "were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that's why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home." It is an argument Mr. Bush has been making with frequency in the past few months, as the challenges to the continuation of the war have grown. On Thursday alone, he referred at least 30 times to Al Qaeda or its presence in Iraq. But his references to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and his assertions that it is the same group that attacked the United States in 2001, have greatly oversimplified the nature of the insurgency in Iraq and its relationship with the Qaeda leadership. It may simplify a complex network of insurgents, criminal gangs, radical Shiite militia, Sunni Tribal outlaws, and other opportunists who we face on the ground in Iraq when Bush singles out AQI. But if they're the one threat that is more deadly than the all the others combined, it makes sense to focus on them. Especially if AQI swears allegiance to the one enemy that has twice successfully attacked us on
