Al-Qaeda in Iraq: A look back on '07

Admiral Smith had a pretty solid news conference yesterday that highlighted all the brutality and twisted logic of Al-Qaeda in Iraq for 2007. Unless you are one of the 20 people that subscribes to the Pentagon Channel, you probably didn't catch it, but the transcript and graphs are up on the MNF-I website for your perusal and analysis. The Admiral talked extensively about Al-Qaeda in Iraq, while the group is mostly Iraqis, it is led by foreigners and the suicide attacks are conducted by primarily foreigners (mostly Saudis BTW). While us Americans have been fortunate to not have a serious Al-Qaeda attack on American soil since 9/11, the Iraqis haven't been:

These bombings were just two of the more than 4,500 attacks by al-Qaeda Iraq in 2007 that targeted civilians. Al-Qaeda murdered 3,870 Iraqis, injuring nearly 18,000 additional innocent civilians. The violence peaked in March and April and as the surge of operations pressed through the summer, the number of high profile explosions slowly began to decrease, however the numbers still remain alarmingly high.

Just so you don't think I'm some public relations schill masquerading as a LT with a lousy attitude, I will say that the Al-Qaeda in Iraq wasn't really around before the 2003 invasion, and connections with Saddam are a little far-fetched. But now that they are here conducting this campaign of brutality (read the story about the teenaged suicide bomber in Fallujah), we pretty much owe it to the world to exterminate them. Methods of accomplishing that can be debated extensively.

The Sinjar truck bombings in August '07 killed 100s of minority Yazidis, but got little American media attention