U.S. general: Anbar insurgents mostly Iraqis

[sabra]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/01/29/anbar.security/index.html

U.S. general: Anbar insurgents mostly Iraqis

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Most insurgents who are battling U.S.-led forces in Iraq's Anbar province are local Iraqis loyal to al Qaeda, and not foreign fighters, the U.S. commander in the region said Monday.

During a video news conference from the provincial town of Falluja, Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer said the insurgents intend to create a strict Islamic state, similar to Afghanistan's Taliban regime before the U.S.-led invasion toppled it in 2001.

They want "a caliphate state out here," he said. "They want to turn back the hands of time. It is antithetical to progress and, again, any positive future."

Although sectarian violence is not the threat in Anbar that it is in the capital Baghdad to the east, some 4,000 Marines will be sent to the region under President Bush's plan to quell violence in the nation, Zilmer said.

"What these additional Marines (will) provide to us is an ability to reinforce the success that we've seen in the last couple of months," the general said. "It allows us to get to some of the areas that we haven't been able to establish the presence we would have liked."

[Eugene]

1. A Marine Corps assessment said many of the same things two months ago.

Anbar Picture Grows Clearer, and Bleaker - Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2006

That report said that it would take 15,000-20,000 additional Marines,
not 4,000, plus a major injection of reconstruction aid to win back
Anbar Province. Anbar's Sunni majority trusts al-Qaeda to protect them
from the Shi'ites more than it trusts the Americans or the Iraqi government.

This is exactly how the War on Terror is being lost.