Just WHO are we fighting in Iraq?

Nine out of 10 times, when it names a foe it faces, the U.S. military names al-Qaida in Iraq. President Bush says Iraq may become an al-Qaida base to "launch new attacks on America." ... (MG) As if al-Qaida needs a new base to launch attacks on America .... 9/11 was launched from inside the U.S. .... nothing the U.S. military is doing in Iraq is making us safer on U.S. soil .... The U.S. ambassador here suggested this week al-Qaida might "assume real power" in Iraq if U.S. forces withdraw.

Critics say this is overblown and possibly a diversion.

"Such speculation is unrealistic," Amer Hassan al-Fayadh, Baghdad University political science dean, said of the U.S. statements.

Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, strong Kurdish ethnic minority, secularist Sunni Muslims and others would suppress any real power bid by the fringe Sunni religious extremists of al-Qaida, al-Fayadh said.

(MG) The Iraqis do not want al-Qaida in Iraq - neither did Saddam Hussein

"The people who are fighting al-Qaida in Iraq are the Sunnis themselves," he said.

Since Iraqis rose up against the U.S. occupation in 2003, the insurgency has spawned a long roster of militant groups - the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Islamic Army in Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah and the Mujahedeen Army, among others - drawing on loyalists of the ousted, Sunni-dominated Baathist regime, other nationalists, Islamists, tribal groups and militant Shiites.

Some 30 groups now claim responsibility for attacks against U.S. and government targets, said Ben Venzke, head of the Virginia-based IntelCenter, which tracks such statements for the U.S. government.

Despite this proliferation of enemies, the U.S. command's news releases on American operations focus overwhelmingly on al-Qaida.

During the first half of May, those releases mentioned al-Qaida 51 times, versus five mentions of other groups.

(MG) because the cheney administration conflated Saddam and Iraq with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida to get the gAp to support the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it might raise questions if the military (or the press) were to suggest that we are fighting the Iraqi people, the ones we liberated from Saddam, the ones to whom we are brining "freedom"