NY Times is wrong about al Qaeda in Iraq

Bill Roggio:

The US military has long maintained that al Qaeda in Iraq is led by foreign al Qaeda. Over the past year, senior al Qaeda operatives such as Omar Farouq, one of Osama bin Laden's lieutenants and al Qaeda's operations chief in Southeast Asia, and Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, one of bin Laden's senior deputies who was "personally chosen by bin Laden to monitor al Qaeda operations in Iraq," have been captured inside Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq's leader, Abu Ayyub al Masri, is an Egyptian selected by al Qaeda Central. Al Masri was a close aide to Ayman al Zawahiri, and was a member of Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Its prior leader, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, was an experienced al Qaeda operative of Jordanian origin. Much of al Qaeda in Iraq's senior leadership is of foreign origin.

In a press conference today, Major General Kevin Bergner, the spokesman for Multinational Forces Iraq, provided further evidence of al Qaeda in Iraq's foreign influence. Bergner highlighted the arrest "Muthanna," al Qaeda's the emir of the Iraq/Syrian border. "During this operation, we also captured multiple documents and electronic files that provided insight into al Qaeda’s foreign terrorist operations, not only in Iraq but throughout the region," Bergner said. "They detail the larger al-Qaeda effort to organize, coordinate, and transport foreign terrorists into Iraq and other places."

"Muthanna was the emir of Iraq and Syrian border area and he was a key facility of the movement of foreign terrorists once they crossed into Iraq from Syria," Bergner said. "He worked closely with Syrian-based al Qaeda foreign terrorist facilitators."

Bergner said several documents were found in Muthanna's custody, including a list of 500 al Qaeda fighters from "a range of foreign countries that included Libya, Morocco, Syria, Algeria, Oman, Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom."

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There is more.

This evidence is going to make it more difficult for the NY Times to continue the fiction that al Qaeda in Iraq is a local operation. The fact is that al Qaeda decided to make a stand in Iraq and we have taken advantage of that to destroy them. That should be applauded not ignored by the NY Times.

The fact is al Qaeda sent it forces into Iraq and tried to start a sectarian civil war. We have defeated that effort and the NY Times should have the intellectual honesty to acknowledge that fact.

Strategy Page has more on al Qaeda's demise in Iraq.

Update: The NY Times did not cover the story but did run with a Reuters story on the revelations. The story contradicts their meme on al Qaeda's operations in Iraq, so you would think they would devote some time to looking at what Maj.Gen. Bergner had to say.