Saddam's former number two urges escalation of insurgency

[bemildred]

Maybe the al Zarqawi bullshit is losing traction??

LONDON (AFP) -
Saddam Hussein's former right-hand man Ezzat Ibrahim al-Duri called for an escalation of the deadly insurgency in
Iraq in a letter attributed to the country's most wanted fugitive.

Ibrahim, who has been on the run since the US-led invasion of March 2003, urged "resistance movements and the Baath party to intensify the national campaign against the occupation", according to the letter published in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Qods Al-Arabi.

US commanders suspect that Ibrahim, 63, has been the paymaster of many attacks on their troops during the insurgency that erupted after Saddam's downfall in April 2003.

Ibrahim also warned against the "sectarian division of Iraq to the benefit of the occupation forces", and denounced Sunni leaders who have agreed to "collaborate" with the United States.

YAHOO

[soothsayer]

1. hee hee, you said 'number two'

[Debau2005]

2. WAIT!

I thought we just recently captured or killed the number two guy? So there are more then one number two? Must be that new math they teach in schools! :shrug:

[cantstandbush]

3. I thought we said we had captured him back in 2004?

Am i wrong about it?

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

4. I had been wondering...

... why no word on al Douri for so long. I "see" he is alive and communicative for the time being.

[mojowork_n]

5. the timing is hardly surprising

I don't know if it was yesterday or the day before, but the Shiites and Kurds got together to change the rules on adopting the new constitution.

Before, to be rejected, it had to fail in 3 provinces. (There are currently 2 totally Sunni provinces, and 2 more that are majority Sunni.) Now, after this change, the constitution can pass in any province (including the Sunni 4), with a simple 50% majority vote. But the goalposts were moved **way** out for validating a rejection. Now, the total "NO" votes have to represent 2/3's (66.6%) of the number of TOTAL, REGISTERED, ELIGIBLE to vote... So with a 60 percent total voter turn-out, if 100% of the voters vote "NO", the constitution will still be approved, because the 60 percent falls short of the 2/3's of the number of eligible voters mark.

(Tom DeLay, reportedly, turned green with envy, when he heard about this new, skew-the-vote-totals/screw-the-voter strategy.)

...It's not something that was widely reported. I happened to catch Sundance last night, the Air America show.

[thebigidea]

6. as if anyone living outside the green zone pays attention to...

... this supposed "constitution."

[LynnTheDem]

7. The Shia-Kurd "govt" reversed their decision on that, after the UN

election monitors said HELL NO.

As they did in January, the Kurds will simply stuff the ballots.