Another round of confessions

Omar of Iraq the Model reports another round of terrorist confessions has been broadcast by Al Iraqiya TV.

Officer: were you doing these killings for Jihad?
Criminal: yes Sir.
Officer: for Jihad or for money?
Criminal: for both Sir.
Officer: how could Jihad be paid for!!
Criminal: (no answer)
Officer: you're Muslim?
Criminal: yes
Officer: on ID card, huh?
Criminal: yes
Officer: do you pray or go to the mosque?
Criminal: no
Officer: do you drink?
Criminal: yes Sir.
Officer: so you don't pray and you don't go to the mosque and you drink and you kill for money and after all this you call your evil doings Jihad?!!! And you call your group the "Islamic Army"!!
Criminal: (no answer again)
Officer: so, tell me about those 9 policemen. Where were they coming from and where were they heading?
Criminal: coming from 'Msayab and heading to Hilla
Officer: so they weren't coming from Tel Aviv? (from the officer's tone, obviously mocking the conspiracy theorists).
Criminal: no Sir, they were Iraqis.
Officer: THEN WHY DID YOU KILL THEM!!?

It would appear Al Iraqiya is hastening the fruition Zarqawi's nightmare.

If we fight them {and we must fight them}, we will confront one of two things. Either:

1 – We fight them, and this is difficult because of the gap that will emerge between us and the people of the land. How can we fight their cousins and their sons and under what pretext after the Americans, who hold the reins of power from their rear bases, pull back? The real sons of this land will decide the matter through experience. Democracy is coming, and there will be no excuse thereafter.

2 – We pack our bags and search for another land, as is the sad, recurrent story in the arenas of jihad, because our enemy is growing stronger and his intelligence data are increasing day by day.

I was overly optimistic last summer when I expected Zarqawi to be out of Iraq before now.  The nature of the opposition may offer a partial explanation.  Here is Omar again:

It's also worth mentioning that most of the performers are people with simple careers while the heads of the cells are in most of the cases ex-officers in the republican guard and middle ranking former Ba'athists and there are always some joint officers from Syria and in this case the Syrian agent's code name was Abu Ivan (no further details were provided).

Regardless of what might be said about the inappropriateness of showing these interrogations and regardless of all the discussions about human rights and Geneva conventions...etc, I believe that it was necessary to bring these confessions and interrogations to the public because this is something that touches the lives of the people in many places and in many ocassions, therefore the people deserve to know everything about it.

Here in Iraq, it DID make a difference as it helped more people who had uncertain thoughts about the "insurgency" get the right picture of the nature of the "insurgents" motivations, goals and ideology. And I think it will also have a positive effect on the performance of the security forces. The progress may be happening slowly but the situation is promising; the people and the security forces are actively building a united front to face terrorism and this is what we really need to secure our country

In the mind of Zarqawi, "the true, decisive battle between infidelity and Islam is in this land..."  But Al Iraqiya is making clear to the Iraq people, this is not a battle of religion.  It's a political fight waged by thugs from the old regime, supported by Syria, hoping to regain power through terror.

Comments

[Clint Lovell]

The real death knell on this sounded earlier this week when 2,000 anti-terror protestors turned out in Baghdad to protest the huges car bomb that went off there the previous day.

For democracy to work, the population has to not only embrace the principles of democracy, but more to the point in Iraq - embrace the personal responsibility that comes with democracy.

This is a two-phase proposition when you think about it and it would appear they have moved into the very important second phase (finally!).