Al Qaeda is a small fraction of the insurgency.

[dude1394]

Al Queda has become the crux of the iraq conflict.


http://engram-backtalk.blogspot.com/...action-of.html

In the debate over Iraq, al Qaeda is the crux of the issue. If you lean to the right, you think that al Qaeda has decided that Iraq is the central front in its battle against America, that it is sending its suicide bombers there in droves in an effort to incite sectarian conflict, that it has succeeded in doing so (unfortunately), that it kills a large number of Iraqi civilians every month, that a withdrawal from Iraq would be correctly perceived as a jihadist victory over America, and that such an outcome would reinvigorate the terrorist organization that attacked us on 9/11 (and that they'd next take the war to Afghanistan by sending their suicide bombers to that country, at which point left wing politicians would start clamoring for surrender there as well).

If you lean to the left, you think that Iraq has fallen into a predictable state of civil war now that Bush foolishly removed the strongman who held everything in check, that our presence there is serving no purpose given that the Iraqi people want us to leave, that the violence is mostly explained by the fact that Sunnis and Shiites hate each other, that the insurgency is too complex to be characterized as the central front in the war on terror, and that al Qaeda -- if it is in Iraq at all -- is a small and insignificant part of the equation (one that right-wing warmongers are grossly exaggerating to avoid accepting the obvious fact that the invasion of Iraq has been a dismal failure).
.... analysis follows