Al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq has taken over the insurgency against the West says General Richard Zahner, the Army’s top military intelligence officer.
In an interview in Baghdad, Zahner said this is “an insurgency that’s been high jacked by a terrorist campaign.” Zahner pointed to Abu Musab Zarqawi as its leader in an interview with Bradley Graham of the Washington Post.
The General says that Zarqawi and his foreign Jihadists have supplanted the Baath Party, the pro-Saddam Hussein insurgents who have been so troublesome for so long.
In Mosul, the third largest city in Iraq, the US Army’s 25th Division has had considerable success in killing or capturing many senior al-Qaeda terrorists in raids and fighting over the summer.
Zarqawi’s network is small but it is unquestionably behind a disproportional amount of the violence. Its crazed suicide bombings have been numerous and effective in exacerbating fear and insecurity in large numbers of Iraqis as well as US and allied soldiers.
Zarqawi seems to be trying to force a civil war between Shia and Sunni Muslims, portraying al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden as defenders of the Sunni population said Major General Zahner.
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