:: blame the extended gestation.... ::

:: Saturday, October 15, 2005 ::

Syria... the next scapegoat in the War on Terror

I was struck by this front page article in the New York Times today
G.I.'s and Syrians in Tense Clashes on Iraqi Border

It seems that the U.S. is playing up a claim that foriegn Islamic radicals are a major force in Iraq with

frustration mount[ing] in the Bush administration and among senior American commanders over their inability to prevent foreign radical Islamists from engaging in suicide bombings and other deadly terrorist acts inside Iraq.

But if you read on towards the end of the article it goes on to state that

Some current and former United States military and intelligence officials who said they believed that Americans were already secretly penetrating Syrian territory question what they see as the Bush administration's excessive focus on the threat posed by foreign Arab fighters going through Syria. They say the vast majority of insurgents battling American forces are Iraqis, not foreign jihadis.

According to a new study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, intelligence analysis and the pattern of detentions in Iraq show that the number of foreign fighters represents "well below 10 percent, and may well be closer to 4 percent to 6 percent" of the total makeup of the insurgency.

One former United States official with access to recent intelligence on the insurgency added that American intelligence reports had concluded that 95 percent of the insurgents were Iraqi.

This former intelligence official said that in conversations with several midcareer American military officers who had recently served in Iraq, they had privately complained to him that senior commanders in Iraq seemed fixated on the issue of foreign fighters, despite the evidence that they represented a small portion of the insurgency.

:: Jim Nichols 10/15/2005 08:11:00 PM [+] ::
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