Al Qaeda crippled in Iraq

Washington Post:

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. At the same time, the intelligence community, and some in the military itself, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown great resilience in the past.

"I think it would be premature at this point," a senior intelligence official said of a victory declaration over AQI, as the group is known. Despite recent U.S. gains, he said, AQI retains "the ability for surprise and for catastrophic attacks." Earlier periods of optimism, such as immediately following the June 2006 death of AQI founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air raid, not only proved unfounded but were followed by expanded operations by the militant organization.

There is widespread agreement that AQI has suffered major blows over the past three months. Among the indicators cited is a sharp drop in suicide bombings, the group's signature attack, from more than 60 in January to around 30 a month since July. Captures and interrogations of AQI leaders over the summer had what a senior military intelligence official called a "cascade effect," leading to other killings and captures. The flow of foreign fighters through Syria into Iraq has also diminished, although officials are unsure of the reason and are concerned that the broader al-Qaeda network may be diverting new recruits to Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The deployment of more U.S. and Iraqi forces into AQI strongholds in Anbar province and the Baghdad area, as well as the recruitment of Sunni tribal fighters to combat AQI operatives in those locations, has helped to deprive the militants of a secure base of operations, U.S. military officials said. "They are less and less coordinated, more and more fragmented," Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, said recently. Describing frayed support structures and supply lines, Odierno estimated that the group's capabilities have been "degraded" by 60 to 70 percent since the beginning of the year.

...

For each assessment of progress against AQI, there is a cautionary note that comes from long and often painful experience. Despite the increased killings and captures of AQI members, Odierno said, "it only takes three people" to construct and detonate a suicide car bomb that can "kill thousands." The goal, he said, is to make each attack less effective and lengthen the periods between them.

Right now, said another U.S. official, who declined even to be identified by the agency he works for, the data are "insufficient and difficult to measure."

"AQI is definitely taking some hits," the official said. "There is definite progress, and that is undeniable good news. But what we don't know is how long it will last . . . and whether it's sustainable. . . . They have withstood withering pressure for a long period of time." Three months, he said, is not long enough to consider a trend sustainable.

Views of the extent to which AQI has been vanquished also reflect differences over the extent to which it operates independently from Osama bin Laden's central al-Qaeda organization, based in Pakistan. "Everyone has an opinion about how franchisement of al-Qaeda works," a senior White House official said. "Is it through central control, or is it decentralized?" The answer to that question, the official said, affects "your ability to determine how successfully [AQI] has been defeated or neutralized. Is it 'game over'?"

...

It looks like the Washington Post is catching up with PrairiePundit on the situation in Iraq. The reluctant of officials to declare victory is understandable, but the evidence of that victory is continuing. Defeating al Qaeda in Iraq has to be a stunning blow to the editors of the NY Times who wavered between saying they were not there to saying they were not defeatable. It is interesting that even those in the media who have used violence as a metric of who is winning, are reluctant to concede that the absence of violence indicates the enemy is losing.

Absence of violence is actually a lagging indicator or metric. The leading indicators were the rallying of Iraqis to our side and the substantially increase in calls to ti lines and other actionable intelligence that led to killings or captures of al Qaeda targets. As the story notes these had a cascading effect on the decline of al Qaeda's operational ability. There has also been anecdotal reports of former al Qaeda fighters who have just gone home and quit, i.e. a real fare well to arms by the terrorist support operation.

Politically, this should be a serious blow to Democrats who only weeks ago were desperate to declare defeat and retreat. It certainly demonstrates their lack of judgment and their lack of character in standing up to the enemy. The same can be said for squishy Republicans like Chuck Hagel. All though votes the Senate Democrats insisted on over the spring and summer have put them on record as being on the wrong side of history and Republicans need to start reminding voters of the positions taken by these losers.

Captain's Quarters makes the important point that the decrease in violence makes the point that the military and the administration have been making for some time that al Qaeda was responsible for most of the violence in Iraq. That is something that those insisting that it was a sectarian civil war have been trying to deny.