It's important to know who the enemy is and is not. NBC News reports:
An NBC News analysis of hundreds of foreign fighters who died in Iraq over the last two years reveals that a majority came from the same country as most of the 9/11 hijackers — Saudi Arabia.Among the suicide bombers was Ahmed al-Ghamdi, a one-time medical student and son of a Saudi diplomat. In December 2004, he climbed into a truck in Mosul and blew himself up.
On an Internet video, another Saudi says goodbye to his mother, then drives an ambulance full of explosives into a building.
They are among more than 400 militants from 21 countries whose deaths were celebrated on Islamic Web sites over the last two years.
"By far the nationality that comes up over and over again is Saudi Arabia," says Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News terrorism expert.
The NBC News analysis of Web site postings found that 55 percent of foreign insurgents came from Saudi Arabia, 13 percent from Syria, 9 percent from North Africa and 3 percent from Europe.
The U.S. military also says Saudi Arabia and Syria are the leading sources of insurgents.
Why do they go?
Saudis captured in Iraq say it's because of pictures on Arab television network Al-Jazeera.
"We saw the Americans massacring the Iraqis," says one Saudi prisoner in Iraq via translation.
Radical Saudi clerics urge them to go to Iraq to kill Americans.
"I read the communique of the 26 clerics," says another Saudi prisoner in Iraq.
ABC News has a related report.
As the number of suicide bombings in Iraq grows higher and higher, a top U.S. military intelligence official tells ABC News they are learning more about the true nature of the bombers.According to Brig. Gen. John Custer, director of intelligence for U.S. Central Command, suicide bombers are "recruited on the Internet. They hear about the terrible atrocities perpetrated against the Iraqis in Iraq. They want to go and martyr themselves."
There have been more than 450 suicide bombings since August. The majority of the bombers are ages 18 to 25 and, with rare exception, male.
Officials say they know of only one suicide bomber who was Iraqi, with the others coming from countries that include Sudan, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia.
Custer says once interest is shown, an elaborate network run by Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi secretly sends the potential bomber into Iraq.
The would-be suicide bombers, says Custer, are then "hooked up with facilitators, whether in their country or neighboring countries, and flown to a capital — Damascus, [Syria,] is a place we've seen associated with this."
They then move across the border using false passports, Custer says, and are held in safe houses.
Once in Iraq, according to Custer, they are repeatedly exposed to videos showing civilian casualties of U.S. bombings or the photographs of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. The indoctrination continues up until the moment the human bomber is given his suicide vest, bag, or vehicle.
Of course, it's being subsidized with petrodollars from your pockets and mine. Think about that the next time you fill up your gas guzzler.
Posted by Alan at June 21, 2005 12:40 AM