The left's desperate attempt to down play al Qaeda's operations in central front of war

Bill Roggio:

The attempts to minimize the role played by al Qaeda in Iraq in the larger Sunni insurgency took a significant step over the past week. Clark Hoyt, the public editor of the New York Times, claimed that the media had become complicit in the government's attempts to paint the entire Sunni insurgency with an al Qaeda brush. Also this week, Malcolm Nance published an article at the Small Wars Journal claiming al Qaeda is being given too much credit for the violence in Iraq. In the article, titled "Al Qaeda in Iraq--Heroes, Boogeymen or Puppets?," Nance claims al Qaeda is but a bit player in the Iraqi insurgency and is largely controlled by the Baathist remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime. To Nance, al Qaeda is both a U.S. Boogeyman and Baathist Puppet.

If taken seriously, these theories are likely to have a significant impact on the political battle over the war in Iraq as it is played out back here in the States. I took a look at the major points advanced by Nance and found his argument to be unpersuasive. Nance makes several factual errors and contradicts himself on several important points. And he fails to recognize the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq, the continually evolving nature of the Sunni insurgency and our understanding of it.

His theory that the insurgency is dominated by Baathist Former Regime Leaders (FRLs) was popular circa 2003-2004, and has long since been discredited. While Baathists and Former Regime Elements certainly play a role in the insurgency, their influence has diminished over time as al Qaeda and its puppet Islamic State of Iraq have coopted significant elements of the Sunni Insurgency.

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Roggio goes through each claim of those down playing the situation and presents the evidence against those claims. It is a long post, but very worthwhile. As someone who has been reading the transcripts of the weekly news briefings from the Multi National Forces Iraq generals for over two years, I think there is a lot that the editors of the NY Times and other writers have chosen to ignore because it did not fit their political agenda to down play the significance of the war in Iraq in connection with the war against al Qaeda. But the most persuasive evidence against their point of view is in the words of al Qaeda's leaders who have consistently claimed it is the central front in their war against us.

What is happening is the Editorial Board of the NY Times and other liberals are slipping into the mode of those who deny al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center, despite the admissions of bin Laden, Zawahiri and Khalid Shiak Mohammad and others. The so called truthers deny the reality of the responsibility for that attack because they want to delgitimize the response to the attack.

That is what the left is doing now with the war in Iraq. Their denial about al Qaeda's role in the war is for the same reason and it is based on the same self delusions. What seems to have awakened them to their problem is the recent offensive against al Qaeda bases in Diyala Province and the belts around Baghdad. The military has made it clear that the focus of these attacks is al Qaeda and that has gotten the left to squirming. They know that retreating from the fight against al Qaeda makes no sense, but that is what they want desperately to do for political reasons.

Power Line has more on the misleading nature of the left's campaign to deny the significance of al Qaeda's operations in Iraq. Gateway Pundit has links to many of al Qaeda's bragging statements about their operations in Iraq. Some of the clues left by al Qaeda in Iraq is over 4,000 bodies of their operatives, including the ones who exploded.

It should also be noted that the "civil war" that the left uses as an excuse for retreat from Iraq is an al Qaeda strategy and they are falling for it.