News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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AQI Is Not al-Qaida, al-Qaida Is Not in Iraq
by Dan Clore
(I prefer the transliteration "al-Qaida", but when quoting others,
I leave the transliteration as they give it.)
John McCain has repeatedly charged that Iran has provided
training and sup****t to "al-Qaeda". He has quickly corrected
this to simply "extremists" when it has been pointed out to him
that al-Qaida is a Sunni group, whereas the Iranians are ****ite.
However, even after making this correction, McCain has allowed
another im****tant misidentification to stand, and critics such as
Media Matter for America have also not corrected this error.
McCain and many others refer to two separate, different, distinct
groups as "al-Qaeda".
The first group is al-Qaida proper -- the group headed by Osama
bin Laden, the group that committed 9/11.
The second group is named "al-Qaida in Iraq" or "al-Qaida in
Mesopotamia" (hereafter, AQI). This group was founded in
October, 2004, as a resistane group against the occupation of
Iraq. It was headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi until his death in
2006.
While the two groups are ideologically allied, and have sometimes
cooperated with each other, they remain distinct.
The much ballyhooed "contacts" between al-Qaida and the Saddam
regime consisted of meetings in which the two considered working
together, but decided against it due to their opposed ideologies.
(Al-Qaida is fundamentalist Sunni, while Saddam was a secularist,
making him an "infidel dog", as Osama bin Laden put it.)
Otherwise, while Saddam Hussein was in power, al-Qaida stayed
outside of the areas that he controlled. Records found after the
invasion show that Saddam was actively attempting to capture
al-Qaida members in order to turn them over to the Bush
administration.
Al-Qaida proper, as opposed to AQI, still barely has a presence
in Iraq.
When individuals like John McCain refer to "al-Qaeda", they do not
mean al-Qaida, but rather AQI. For example, McCain has stated
that “Al Qaeda is in Iraq. It’s called ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq.’" But contra
McCain, AQI is not al-Qaida, and while AQI is in Iraq, al-Qaida is
not in Iraq.
For clarity's sake, I suggest referring to al-Qaida as al-Qaida, and
referring to al-Qaida in Iraq as AQI.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"
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