UK Sunday Times: Insurgents told US, give us the weapons and in 30 days regain control of Baghdad

[sabra]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2496369_2,00.html

<snip>

“I told Khalilzad that we had the know-how and the manpower to regain control of Baghdad and rid it of the pro-Iranian militias,” one of the insurgent commanders added.

“If he would just provide us with the weapons, we would clean up the city and regain control of Baghdad in 30 days.”

...

The final blow to the negotiations came in mid-March when Khalilzad said that he would be willing to talk to Iran about resolving the conflict in Iraq. The news came as a bombshell to the Sunni insurgents, who complained to the ambassador at their final meeting.

Shortly afterwards the government of Nouri al-Maliki was formed with the support of pro-Iranian elements. The Sunni insurgents responded by sending a memo to Khalilzad — now tipped to become US ambassador to the United Nations — suspending all meetings and accusing the Americans of “dishonesty”.

According to one commander, the insurgent groups were told: “Place your faith in Allah, the gloves are off. Carry on with your resistance.”

[acmavm]

1. Dishonesty??? That 's the least of their problems. They're also

murderers, liars, and thieves. Why would they think that after killing hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians that they wouldn't lie as well?????

Sometimes things are just so surreal you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

edit: punctuation

[stillcool]

2. things that make me go hmmmm....

US Writes Sunni Resistance Out of Anbar Story
By Gareth Porter *
Inter Press Service
September 26, 2006
The omission of any mention of the indigenous Sunni resistance forces from the Times story followed a Sep. 11 Washington Post report on a secret Marine Corps intelligence analysis of the situation in Anbar, in which Pentagon officials were quoted as saying the document portrays a "vacuum that has been filled by the insurgent group al Qaeda in Iraq".

The disappearance of Sunni resistance forces from these papers' coverage of the situation in Anbar mirrors the view presented by the U.S. military briefers for the past six months, which has systematically ignored what has become, in effect, a third force in the war in Iraq -- a Sunni resistance to both the occupation and al Qaeda.

That third force emerged last year out of the struggle in the Sunni heartland of Iraq over the constitutional referendum and December parliamentary election. Al Qaeda in Iraq threatened anyone in Anbar province who participated in the referendum with death, but the major Sunni armed groups broke openly with al Qaeda and supported full participation by Sunnis to defeat the referendum.

At a meeting at a U.S. base in Ramadi in December 2005, reported by the London Sunday Times last February, a former Iraqi general, Saab al-Rawi, representing the Iraqi Sunni insurgents in the province, asked Gen. George Casey, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Ramadi and their replacement by a brigade of former soldiers from the area.

But Casey angrily refused, accusing al-Rawi of wanting a U.S. pullout so the insurgents could take over the city. The Iraqi general recalled that his forces had protected the city for six months after the fall of Saddam's regime. "You have not protected this city and can never do so," said al-Rawi, "for you are foreigners here -- unwanted and unwelcome."

The Shiite-dominated Iraqi government was more responsive to the Sunni plea. The Los Angeles Times reported Jan. 29 that national security adviser Mowaffak Rubaie acknowledged that the major Sunni resistance organisations were in an irreconcilable conflict with al Qaeda. "We are talking about two ideologies," he declared.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari promised the Sunni tribal leaders in January he would support the request for the replacement of U.S. troops in Ramadi with local Sunni forces, according to Al Hayat. But that never happened, and the U.S. military command soon reversed its line on the Sunni armed organisations. Instead of touting them as important to the solution to the al Qaeda problem, the U.S. military command began to act as though the United States didn't need Sunni armed organisations at all. In his Mar. 9 briefing, Gen. Lynch dropped the distinction between the Sunni armed organisations and al Qaeda. "The people of Iraq are uniting against the insurgency," he declared. And he added, "Remember, democracy equals failure for the insurgency."
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/resist/2006/0926sunniresist.htm