Iraq: Who's the Enemy, Really? (Updated)

Just about everyone in the chain of command, from the President on down, is saying publicly that "Al Qaeda is public enemy number one in Iraq." Veteran terror-watcher Malcolm Nance, writing at the Small Wars Journal blog, isn't so sure.

There is no question that Al Qaeda is a real threat but are they the main threat?
Has AQI has been catapulted to the top of the insurgency by virtue of the fact that they carry out the most dramatic and sectarian attacks or hard intelligence?
In fact, listening to Washington one would think that the coalition forces are pretty much fighting “All AQI. All the Time.” As with most things in Mesopotamia, this is not nearly so clear cut...

We don't really know our enemy that well... Overwhelming evidence exists that that the [former Saddam regime loyalists] have been waging the lion’s share of the insurgency. Until 2004 they were considered a separate part of the insurgency but recently they have been called ‘Al Qaeda-associated’
because AQI was operating in their area of operations … by 2007 it wasn’t hard for
Washington to make a semantic and rhetorical leap to refer to all insurgency forces as “Al Qaeda.”

All that talk is actually counter-productive to American efforts in Iraq, Mark Lynch argues.

The exaggeration of al-Qaeda's role works directly and devastatingly against American goals. It magnifies al-Qaeda's perceived power, strengthening its own media campaign and feeding its most powerful propaganda instrument. Attributing all these attacks to al-Qaeda certainly doesn't hurt al-Qaeda's image: Iraq is the one place where al-Qaeda's violence is actually widely supported in the Muslim world.

The *SWJ *blog
-- which, if you don't have bookmarked by now, you're not seriously following today's counterinsurgency and counter-terror fights -- also has an essay from DANGER ROOM pal (and L.A. Sheriff's Department counter-terror guru) John Sullivan, on "policing networked diasporas."

UPDATE: Excuse me. My head is about to explode. Most people understand that the group calling itself "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is not the same guys who are lead by Bin Laden, Zawahiri, & co. Those people would not include our President, apparently, who said today:

...al Qaeda is doing most of the spectacular bombings, trying to incite sectarian violence. The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is the crowd that is now bombing people...

Jeebus. The folks in Mesopotomia weren't even called "Al Qaeda" until years into their bombings; they dubbed themselves Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, "Group of oneness (Monotheism) and the Holy Struggle," instead. Then, their leader made some vague pledge to the Al Qaeda O.G.s, and they started to use a new, Al-Qaeda monicker. But even now, the ties are considered very loose. Which is why the bad guys in Iraq are usually called an "affiliate" of the ones in Pakistan/Afghanistan.

So maybe this is why the President and his people keep throwing around the "Al Qaeda" name: to scare people with the specter of 9/11.

(High five: Umansky)