Even as Saddam Hussein was being taken into custody, the violence continued. There is now a clear pattern of attacks against Iraqi police, with car bomb assaults on a series of police stations. The fact that these outrages are being carried out by suicide bombers suggests that these are not die-hard Baathist thugs. Self-sacrifice was never their style, as the chief thug has so conclusively demonstrated.
| That's more the Islamist trademark, though Sammy was pushing it for the Fedayeen... |
US intelligence speaks variously of up to 15 different insurgent groups at work in Iraq. The hoods who kidnap and terrorize Iraqis are more probably the local criminals whom Saddam released onto the streets in one his final acts of vengeance against a people whom he had terrorized for so long.
| "Y'r honor! My client ain't a terrorist! He's a crook!" |
Then there are the ambushes by various paramilitary groups, including the Fedayeen, who it is believed are organized by Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri — since Saddam’s capture the most senior member of the old regime still at large. The heart will have gone out of these insurgents with the capture of Saddam, not least because of the humiliating way in which the man who exhorted them to lay down their lives for him so abjectly surrendered.
| Which is why we've got to keep playing that up... |
But the organized attacks, using cars and trucks packed with explosives, remain, and it is reasonable to assume that they are largely the work of terror groups who used the chaos following the invasion to infiltrate their men and material into Iraq. The borders with Syria and Jordan were particularly porous in the days following the US attack. Foreign militant wanting to fight the Americans to the death entered in large numbers to support Saddam’s regime, and once it collapsed, those of them not captured went into hiding. Security on Iraq’s borders has changed in the last eight months. It is now difficult for such militants to enter Iraq. That in time will diminish their ability to strike. Not only do their numbers decrease with every fanatical attack, but so too do their stockpiles of explosives. Though Iraq is still awash with weapons hidden by the old regime, it must be questioned how easy it is for insurgents to discover and gain access to these stores.
| Without Sammy running things, and with his organization falling apart, we're going to be on an equal footing with them — we'll stand as much chance of finding them as they will. And we'll also have our guys freed up to spend more time looking for them... |
With an Iraqi population released from the terror of Saddam’s return, the outside insurgents are also going to find it increasingly difficult to operate. There are now many more Iraqis who will be prepared to take the risk of informing against them — Iraqis whose hostility to them will grow with every fresh outrage. They are now also up against coalition forces whose morale has soared with the capture of their chief target. The suicide attacks will continue, but probably on an ever-diminishing scale. If that is so, it gives the Americans a credible exit route by disengaging sooner from the daily struggle to maintain law and order and handing them over to the Iraqis — along with what happens to Saddam Hussein himself.
| That's been the idea from the first, I think... |
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