quote:

Zarqawi, al Qaeda are heading out, U.S. general

Al Qaeda in Iraq and its presumed leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, have conceded strategic defeat and are on their way out of the country, a top U.S. military official contended yesterday.

quote:

The group's failure to disrupt national elections and a constitutional referendum last year "was a tactical admission by Zarqawi that their strategy had failed," said Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who commands the XVIII Airborne Corps.
"They no longer view Iraq as fertile ground to establish a caliphate and as a place to conduct international terrorism," he said in an address at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Since we are interested in the talks of US Generals, I thought you might like this one.

REF.

quote:

"They no longer view Iraq as fertile ground to establish a caliphate and as a place to conduct international terrorism,"

They didn't view Iraq as such before the invasion - so the objective of maybe getting back to somewhere closer to Square One has been successfully achieved. Medals all round, I guess.

quote:

They didn't view Iraq as such before the invasion

One would question why they would go in to fight if this was the case.

Possibly al Qaeda went in to Iraq to fight because, thanks to Rumsfeld's incompetence, Iraq post-invasion presented several opportunities.

Iraq became a failed state, without a strong central government, and little ability to enforce law. Inadequate numbers of inadequately armoured US troops presented relatively easy targets. The disbanded Iraq army, and every Iraqi who had lost relatives or friends to the 'shock and awe' bombing campaign, were potential recruits to fundamentalism, even if they hadn't been so before.

Before the invasion, Iraq was not 'fertile ground to establish a caliphate and as a place to conduct international terrorism'. After the invasion, it looked like it was. The General seems to be saying that, if things don't go wrong, maybe now it isn't again. Some achievement.

They may have left because, unlike our military, they met their recruiting goals (without "re-adjusting" those goals.)

I hope Vines is right. However, since he works for Rumsfeld and bush, I'll wait for some sort of proof. If he is right, then all the US has to deal with are the thousands of Iraiqis who see the US as occupying forces; remember that the foreign fighters in Iraq were just a small percentage of those fighting against the US. He also has to worry about avoiding entanglement in the civil war armed disagreement between different factions in the Iraqi citizenry.