Page 127 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

Railing Iraqi Resistance 117

Cockburn of the Independent of London reports, the split within resistance
groups is "between Islamic fanatics, willing to kill anybody remotely connected
with the government, and Iraqi nationalists who want to concentrate on attacking
the 130,000 U.S. troops in ~ra~."'~
It has become popular to marginalize resistance groups as foreign in origin.
Drawing from military sources, MSNBC News postulates that "foreign fighters"
are migrating to Iraq primarily from Saudi Arabia and Syria, in addition to a
number of other c~untries.'~ Mainstream news outlets repeatedly report the "for-
eign fighters" thesis promoted by the Bush administration without strong reser-
vations. The Washington Post and ABC News transmitted the claims of Ameri-
can political and military leaders who argue that the number of "foreign
fighters" in Iraq is on the rise.86 Other sources have made similar claims, but
independent of citing military leaders. In one instance, Rowman Scaborough of
the Washington Times maintained that, "The war in Iraq is increasingly looking
more like a showdown with Osama bin Laden's a1 Qaeda followers than a battle
primarily against Saddam Hussein loyalists." Citing "foreign jihadists" who
have "crossed the border with Syria to join the a1 Qaeda network in Iraq led by
Abu Musab Zarqawi," Scarborough addressed the "scores of captures of
Zarqawi's terrorists" who have been detained, particularly in U.S. Operation
Matador and ensuing operations, as a sign of a "sobering reality" in which
"Zarqawi has in place a larger number of cell leaders and planners" and "a siz-
able terror network since the March 2003 in~asion."'~
Prior to Zarqawi's reported death at the hands of the U.S. military, Michael
Ware of Time magazine claimed that, "the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi and his
network of hard-line Jihadis have long been the driving force [emphasis added]
of the insurgency, transforming it from a nationalist struggle to one fueled by
religious zealotry and infused with foreign rec~uits."'~ The Los Angeles Times
labeled Zarqawi Iraq's "Insurgency ma~termind."~~ Such arguments have gained
a sympathetic ear amongst members of the Bush administration, who have main-
tained that "Islamic radicals" are "trying to enslave whole nations and intimidate
the world."90 While the harsh condemnations of Islamist terrorist cells such as
A1 Qaeda is clearly appropriate in light of their terrorist attacks on civilians, to
portray them as the "driving force" behind resistance to the U.S., capable in
power and scope of "enslaving whole nations" is grossly inaccurate at best.
Available evidence suggests that these Islamist forces account for only a very
small number of Iraq's resistance forces, rather than the dominant force. One
report from the Center for Strategic International Studies estimates that only
between 4 and 10 percent of resistance fighters are from outside of 1raqY1 while
the Los Angeles Times itself admits, contrary to its "insurgency mastermind"
claims, that during the Falluja campaign, "of the more than 1,000 men between
the ages of fifteen and fifty-five who were captured. . .just fifteen are confirmed
foreign fighters."92
Evidence of foreign "masterminding" of resistance has generally been diffi-
cult to come by. The statistics cited above suggest that the behavior of a very
small minority of Zarqawi inspired "foreign terrorists" is not representative, by
and large, of other resistance groups, which have been primarily concerned with