McCain, the Retired Military "Analysts" and the Myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq

[Postman]

http://www.juancole.com/

I am quoted in this NYT piece today on John McCain's allegations that the US is fighting "al-Qaeda" in Iraq and that there is a danger of "al-Qaeda" taking over the country if the US leaves.

Those allegations don't make any sense. McCain contradicts himself because he sometimes warns that the Shiites or Iran will take over Iraq. He doesn't seem to realize that the US presided over the ascension to power in Iraq of pro-Iranian Shiite parties like Nuri al-Maliki's Islamic Mission Party and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. So which is it? There is a danger that pro-Iranian Shiites will take over (which is anyway what we have engineered) or that al-Qaeda will? It is not as if they can coexist. Since the Shiites are 60 percent and by now well armed and trained, and since the Sunni Arabs are only 17 percent of the population and since only about 1 percent of them perhaps supports Salafi radicalism--how can the latter hope to take over?

Even if McCain only means, as his campaign manager tried to suggest, that "al-Qaeda" could take over the Sunni Arab areas of Iraq, that doesn't make any sense either (McCain has actually alleged that al-Qaeda would take over the whole country.) The Salafi radicals have lost in al-Anbar Province. Diyala Province, one of the other three predominantly Sunni areas, is ruled by pro-Iranian Shiites. That leaves Salahuddin and Ninevah Provinces. Among the major military forces in Ninevah is the Kurdish Peshmerga, some of them integrated e.g. into the Mosul police force. Hint: The Kurds don't like "al-Qaeda", i.e. Salafi radicalism. Jalal Talabani is a socialist.

So the Shiites and the Kurds among the Iraqis, now more powerful than the Sunni Arabs, would never allow a radical Salafi mini-state in their midst. They would crush them. And substantial segments of the Iraqi Sunni population have already helped crush them.

Moreover, Shiite Iran, secular Turkey, Baathist Syria and monarchical Jordan would never put up with a Salafi radical mini-state on their borders. They would crush it. Jordan's secret police already appear to have played a role in killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist who had his own "Monotheism and Holy War" organization that for PR purposes he at one point rechristened "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" (he actually never got along with Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri).

McCain's whole discourse on Iraq is just a typical rightwing Washington fantasy made up in order to get you to spend $15 billion a month on his friends in the military industrial complex and to get you to allow him to gut the US constitution and the Bill of Rights.

[vixengrl]

1. Thanks for posting this. One of the most disturbing things

first off, about this administration, but now, regarding McCain, is that what superficially looks like a failure to understand or even bother to understand the region we are interfering in, but, if we actually throw out the presumption of just plain gross ignorance and neglect, looks suspiciously like a lot of destructive *lying*. Either John McCain has gone to this region eight times, has a son fighting there, has supported the invasion and the surge, and also a long-term continuation of our occupation of a region which it appears we can not sustain, and which will not become a peacetime mission, yet has no understanding of who or what we are fighting and has chosen not to know any better--which would mean he is thoroughly incompetent to be Commander in Chief; or he knows better and actually is lying while supporting some other unspoken goal--which means he is too crooked to be allowed near the Oval Office. Either scenario disgusts me.

I more and more lean towards "lying"--if only because I find it impossible that he has been corrected regarding the % of al-Qaeda and their religious affiliation, and would still be confused. It is impossible to be that dumb and maintain a carrer as long as his. It is, however, possible to snow a great number of complacent people into *hearing* "al-Qaeda", and still viewing Iraq as being associated with 9/11. Following from that assumption, why not let the people assume Iran could even be associated with these same terrorists? ("Terrorist" becoming a word associated with--the native population of Iraq rather violently indisposed to our presence. Shh, another thing we shouldn't understand.)

In the meanwhile, he, just like the rest of the Bushies, are banking on no one ever so much as hitting Wikipedia about the issue. In an election year? Maybe this should become the issue:

Does McCain know what he's talking about?

Or is he just another neo-con liar?