12-30-2006, 04:50 PM
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#43 (permalink)
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Banned
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Originally Posted by xepherys
People? Probably! Iraqis? I doubt it! A large number of insurgents are not even Iraqis. Many of those we're fighting over there are outsiders trying to make a point......
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I'm sorry xepherys, I can find no record of US military commanders in Iraq who back your opinion, indeed...there was no proven "foreign terrorists presence" in Iraq in areas that Saddam controlled in the months after 9/11, but there is a reliable record of reports of terrorists in camps in areas controlled by the Kurds and their American allies:
Quote:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1003/p03s03-woiq.html
Specials>Iraq in Transition
from the October 03, 2006 edition
.......Foreigners a small share of Iraqi opposition
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq killed by a US airstrike in June, was undoubtedly a key insurgent leader, able to rally native Iraqi Sunni Islamists to his cause. Evidence suggests, however, that foreign fighters such as he are a small minority of the overall insurgent force.
Between 50 and 70 foreign fighters sneak over the border into Iraq every month, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, chief US military spokesman in Iraq, said last week. Most come from Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, or Syria.
Between January and mid-September, US or Iraqi government forces captured some 630 foreign fighters, according to General Caldwell. Of these, 370 remain in detention in Iraq. The rest have been processed through Iraqi courts and sentenced, or released. Some may have been taken to undisclosed locations elsewhere.
The total number of foreign fighters in Iraq is between 800 and 2,000, according to estimates by the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. In contrast, the total strength of the insurgency is more than 20,000 people, according to Brookings. That means the vast majority of its fighters come from Iraq itself.
"In proportion to the whole insurgency, [the percentage of foreign fighters] is very small," says Aidan Kirby, a terrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)...........
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