I'm sure that you've heard the news by now of the trucks loaded with toxic chlorine gas used by suicide bombers. It comes on the heels of reports of the cooperation of Sunni sheiks in the Anbar province with the Iraqi and U.S. military forces.
Three suicide bombers driving trucks rigged with tanks of toxic chlorine gas struck targets in heavily Sunni Anbar province including the office of a Sunni tribal leader opposed to al-Qaida. The attacks killed at least two people and sickened 350 Iraqi civilians and six U.S. troops, the U.S. military said Saturday.Omar at Iraq the Model believes this was a huge mistake by al Qaeda and that they just made some huge enemies:
There is a mounting power struggle between insurgents and the growing number of Sunnis who oppose them in Anbar, the center of the Sunni insurgency, which stretches from Baghdad to the borders with Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The Anbar assaults came three days after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, traveled there to reach out to Sunni clan chiefs in a bid to undermine tribal support for the insurgency.
I've read at least two very optimistic reports from al-Almada in the last week about purported victories of the tribes and police over al-Qaeda in Ramadi and Fallujah. I was reluctant to trust the accuracy of the reports which sited unnamed sources but now seeing the reaction of al-Qaeda suggests that the action of the tribes was so painful that al-Qaeda retaliated in the way we see today.Now, we really need to stop and reflect on what just happened here. The Democrats and the MSM have been blathering on and on about civil war, but here we have Sunni on Sunni violence and not only that, we have al Qaeda targeting their own people (Sunnis). This isn't just about Sunni and Shia fighting, it's about al Qaeda making sure we run from Iraq. The bombings are their way to intimidate but I suspect it will fail. Targeting your own has a way of making former allies, lifetime enemies who will stop at nothing to take you down.
Al-Qaeda's terrorists-whom AP insists on calling insurgents-expended three suicide bombers and precious resources against their supposedly sympathetic civilian Sunni hosts instead of American and Iraqi soldiers and Shia civilians; their usual enemies.
If this indicates anything it indicates that al-Qaeda's is reprioritizing the targets on the hit list. The reason: al-Qaeda is sensing a serious threat in the change of attitude of the tribes toward them and perhaps the apparently successful meeting of the sheiks with Maliki and the agreements that were made then was the point at which open war had to be declared.
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