Evidence Al Qaeda is doomed

From the London Times (February 12):

The acting director of a Baghdad psychiatric hospital has been arrested on suspicion of supplying al-Qaeda in Iraq with the mentally impaired women that it used to blow up two crowded animal markets in the city on February 1, killing about 100 people.

Now it should be pointed out that this hospital director may have only agreed to supply these women under extreme duress. According to the Times, Al Qaeda doesn't just use waterboarding to convince people they should cooperate. Al Qaeda is suspected of having murdered the hospital director's predecessor, for not participating in this little scheme of theirs.

As the Times goes on to report:

The US military believes that al-Qaeda is adopting these extreme tactics because the prevalence of check-points and concrete barriers is making car bombings harder, and fewer foreign suicide bombers are reaching Iraq ...

Foreign jihadists – invariably male – used to carry out 90 per cent of the suicide bombings in Iraq, but the US military believes that tighter controls have halved the influx to 50 or 60 a month.

Again, more evidence that it is the whackos not the locals who form Al Qaeda's base of support.

Faith in Pakistan rewarded

That would be my faith in the common sense of ordinary Pakistanis, even in the tribal areas. A report from Pakistan's North-West Frontier and Baluchistan provinces in yesterday's New York Times:

Since being swept to power in 2002 on a wave of anti-Americanism and sympathy for the Taliban after the American invasion of Afghanistan, the mullahs here have found that the public mood has shifted against them.

People complain that they have failed to deliver on their promises, that they have proved just as corrupt as other politicians and that they have presided over a worsening of security, demonstrated most vividly in a rising number of suicide attacks carried out by militants based in the nearby tribal areas.

“They did not serve the people,” said Faiz Muhammad, 47, a farmer whose son was killed in the bomb blast on an Awami political gathering on Saturday...

Pollsters and political analysts in Pakistan have maintained that the religious parties command only a small percentage of popular support and that the 2002 elections were an aberration, a reaction to the American intervention in Afghanistan and the result of rigging by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, which have always had links with the religious parties.

Two opinion polls released this week show that the standing of the religious parties has fallen to a new low, with voters showing a strong shift of support toward the moderate parties...

If the Taliban were on the ballot sheet, they would garner just 3 percent of the vote, and Al Qaeda only 1 percent, according to the poll...

For Mr. Wali, the expected trouncing of the religious parties on Monday is recompense.

“I feel,” he said, “that we Pashtuns have had enough of war, enough of bloodshed, and the common man now accepts that.”

Off-topic unless American president controls all

I just have to post the best writing I've seen to date on the election.

John Podheretz writing about the leading contender for the Republican nomination, Sen. John McCain in the lastest issue of Commentary:

Perhaps, having engaged with a real enemy who broke his arms and tortured him and sought to destroy him body and mind and soul, he doesn’t see an enemy when he sees a Democrat but rather just another American whose ideas on many things differ from his but with whom he might share some common ground.

McCain would, there is no question, be a lousy leader of an ideological movement. But the Republican party is not an ideological movement. It is a political vehicle for the American right-of-center. Those who confuse the Republican party with the conservative movement are indulging in a fantasy — that there is purity in politics and that there is something immoral about ideological impurity.

And now, a heartwarming story from Iraq

Michael Yon reports on lunch with an Iraqi sheik:

The old Sheik, who seemed upset, asked through Edward, “Where is Captain Cook?” The Iraqis I’ve met seem to treat CPT Cook like a local Sheik. The kids know his name. (“Hey Captain Cook!” “Hey Mohammed!”) When LTC Crider replied that Captain Cook was on the way, the old Sheik smiled as if hearing that his favorite grandson was coming to lunch.

By 12:15, we had shed our helmets and body armor, and once we finished with all the formalities of hugs-and-kisses-and-we-all-love-each-other, we sat down on comfortable couches. There were 6 Iraqi men and one old Sheik, five American soldiers, plus Edward. And so there were 13 people in room. The rank structure of the folks in the room is as follows: Colonel Gibbs is the boss and Edward is his interpreter. LTC Crider works for Gibbs. Captain Cook works for Crider. So it’s Gibbs-Crider-Cook. Cook is the lowest ranking officer in the room. This is important to remember because it comes up later.

At first the talk was higher level, with Gibbs explaining a few things about money hold-ups back in America due to some political issues, and how there were some issues with the Iraqi government and yada yada yada. The conversation covered a range of topics, and after some time the old Sheik saw that I was taking notes. Through Edward, he began directly addressing me. The Sheik wanted to tell the pen taking the notes that these Sunni-Shia problems did not exist before the invasion, but were created when a few traitorous Iraqis gave President Bush bad advice which the Iranians then exploited.

“The Iranians are poison to the Iraqi people,” said the old Sheik. He said he is from the Jabouri tribe, and that many Jabouri are Sunni, like him, but many others are Shia. He pointed to someone across the room and said, “That is my son-in-law, and he is Shia!” and his son-in-law smiled. I see this all over. The fabric of Iraq is finely woven and not coarse like it sometimes appears from afar. The old Sheik said that both Sunni and Shia were friends who often came to his house. They even prayed together. Most of the Shia in his neighborhood had been “cleansed” by al Qaeda, which upset the old Sunni Sheik. He wants his Shia neighbors to come back. (I had written earlier about Sunni asking for their Christian neighbors to come back only a few miles away.)

At 1235, when Captain Cook finally arrived, the old Sheik practically stood briskly to meet him, and they met with the handshake/hug that is normal, but warmer than usual, like Grandfather meets Grandson, which would soon become perplexing.

Now that Captain Cook was there, Colonel Gibbs was mostly cut out of conversation between Captain Cook and the old Sheik. Gibbs, like other senior commanders, just kind of sat back and listened, nodding at times, saying “Uh ha.” “Right.” “Yes.” But what was most interesting was that the old Sheik and Captain Cook were arguing nearly the whole time, and Cook was saying the old Sheik was wrong about this or that.

Later I mentioned to Cook how strange it was that the Sheik seemed upset when Cook was not there, but then, when he finally arrived, the two of them only argued. Cook told me he argues all the time with the Sheik, and that sometimes the exchange gets a lot more exciting than what we watched that day.

Running out of suicide bombers

Because now the insurgents are turning the mentally retarded into remote-controlled bombers. The Associated Press reports:

Two women described as mentally disabled and strapped with remote- control explosives—and possibly used as unwitting suicide bombers—brought carnage Friday to two pet bazaars, killing at least 91 people in the deadliest day since Washington flooded the capital with extra troops last spring.

They sent these women into pet markets. And as the AP goes on to report:

Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, Iraq's chief military spokesman in Baghdad, said the women had Down syndrome and may not have known they were on suicide missions, but gave no further details on how authorities pieced together the evidence. He also said the bombs were detonated by remote control.

The coordinated blasts—coming 20 minutes apart in different parts of the city—appeared to reinforce U.S. claims al-Qaida in Iraq may be increasingly desperate and running short of able-bodied men willing or available for such missions.

No kidding.

Police said the woman wearing the bomb sold cream in the mornings at the market and was known to locals as "the crazy lady."

Too sad.

Anyway, the good news (which admittedly I compulsively have to find) is that the insurgents seem to have run out of not just willing and able men - which has been the case it appears for awhile - but now, willing and able women too.

Associated Press records show that since the start of the war at least 169 people have been killed in at least 17 attacks or attempted attacks by female suicide bombers, including Friday's bombings.

The most recent previous attack was Jan. 16 when a female suicide bomber detonated her explosives among men preparing for the Ashoura holiday in a Shiite village in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad.

While involving women in such deadly activity violates cultural taboos in Iraq, the U.S. military has warned that al-Qaida is recruiting women and young people as suicide attackers because militants are increasingly desperate to thwart stepped-up security measures.

At least this time the bomber wasn't a child - a low the AP reminds us the insurgents have stooped to before:

In January 2005, Iraq's interior minister said insurgents used a disabled child in a suicide attack on election day. Police at the scene of the bombing said the child appeared to have Down syndrome.

Now, was there a message the insurgents meant to deliver in their placing of this attack?

Many teenage boys were among the casualties in the al-Ghazl bombing Friday, according to the officials who gave the death toll.

Somehow I think that if there was, it will fall on deaf ears.