“Revenge, revenge, Anbar people,”

NY Times:

Tribal sheiks in flowing robes, American military commanders in pressed uniforms and senior members of the Iraqi government gathered Friday at the sprawling desert farm of a prominent Sunni Arab tribal leader who was assassinated Thursday.

In an event saturated with tribal traditions, the mourners eulogized their lost leader, Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, also known as Abu Risha, who had gathered the Anbar tribes and worked with the Americans to fight jihadist militants in the province. And they sent a stark message to his killers: the men of Anbar will hunt them down.

“Revenge, revenge, Anbar people,” came the chants from Sheik Sattar’s guest house. “Where can he hide or run away, he who is wanted by us.”

“All of Anbar is Abu Risha, so Abu Risha has not been killed,” said his brother, Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha. “I pledge to you, my brothers and my cousins, that I will follow the road that was taken by Sheik Abu Risha. We will follow it until we kill the last terrorist in Iraq.”

The Interior Minister said he would form a police brigade named after Sheik Sattar and give it the mission of hunting down his killers. Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who attended the funeral, said the government would support the Anbaris’ fight against extremists and give the province money for economic development.

Sheik Sattar had organized the tribes into the Anbar Awakening Council, which worked closely with the American military and formed units that now serve as local security forces to fight militants who terrorized and killed civilians. The effort was so successful in reducing violence in the province that American commanders have sought to replicate it elsewhere in Iraq.

The extremist group that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq, another name for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is foreign-led, claimed responsibility on Friday for the bombing that killed him.

...

That last paragraph is yet another attempt by the editors of the NY Times to deny that the guys bin Laden and Zawahiri make up their central front in the war on terror are connected to them. It is part of the Times on going attempt to delegitimize the war effort in Iraq. It should also be noted that American intelligence is not the only source saying this group is foreign led, since both bin Laden and Zawahiri do too. This is one of those areas where the editors of a paper embarrass some of their excellent writers by making them put in incoherent nonsense into a story.

But, for the men who attended this funeral, they know who they are fighting no matter how confused the NY Times editors are and they are determined that the Sheiks murder will not go unpunished. Al Qaeda made a serious mistake when it first tried to intimidate the Sheiks of Anbar and they have just made a bigger mistake.

This paragraph is also worthy of note:

...

Elsewhere in Iraq, the sheik was remembered at Friday Prayer at Sunni and Shiite mosques. In Najaf, a city holy to Iraqi Shiites, Sadr al-Deen al-Qubbanchi, a senior Shiite cleric, lauded him as an Iraqi hero. “This leader will remain a symbol of unity of the Shiite and Sunnis, and will remain a symbol of people of Iraq generally and Anbar especially,” he said.

...

This expression of unity that many have doubted in Iraq was buried in the story.