Al Qaeda's foreign legion in Iraq

Sunday Times:

UP TO 150 Islamic radicals have travelled from Britain to Iraq to join up with a “British brigade” that has been established by Al-Qaeda leaders to fight coalition forces.

Senior security sources say leaders of the Iraqi insurgency have set up a “foreign legion” composed entirely of westerners to fight alongside the insurgents in the war against British and American forces. Some are preparing to carry out suicide attacks while others have received basic combat training for attacks on western troops The so-called “British brigade” is said to be operating under the direct command of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Members of the unit are thought to be in the Sunni triangle, a combat zone and Al-Qaeda hotbed west of Baghdad.

The flow of young Muslim men from western Europe to Iraq has increased dramatically in the past two years. The “pipeline” of suspected terrorists is being fuelled by growing resentment about American and British policy and scandals such as the mistreatment of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison.

A senior security source, confirming that between 120 and 150 Britons had travelled to Iraq, said there was concern that the flow was increasing: “The really worrying thing is that this has become a movement that people believe in. It’s not simply a matter of them joining a terrorist organisation.”

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These men are usually used as ordinace and not troops. It does suggest that al Qaeda's traditional source for such ordinace is drying up. Human bomb attacks in Iraq have decreased substantially in the last year. That Abu Ghraid would be used as a pretext for this expedition dmonstrates the success of the liberal media in turning conduct that the military had already discovered and was prosecuting into a propaganda coup for the enemy. They were able to do this because one of the defendents was unsuccessful in getting the goverment to drop the case, so he turned the photos over to the media. If the media wanted to win this war they would have recognize that the photos should never have been published.