Hey here's a cool idea--arm your enemy, make him cross his heart and hope to die if he uses the weapons you have given him against you he will suffer, then send him out there to fight your enemies. But wait! I thought he was the enemy! Long ago and faraway apparently means yesterday in Bushville USA. Magically our enemies have somehow overnight become our newest allies. Oh my God! How lucky can we get?

This new strategy to arm the Sunnis has about as much chance of helping us fight this war as a flea has of draining all the blood out of a dog. For years now all we've heard is how the Sunnis were killing Shites, a fact which was causing "revenge attacks" (which when decoded means civil war). We were told the Sunni group was breeding more and more insurgents, and that they were the ones killing Americans.

Apparently all that has changed though. Someone in the OZ Room of the White House has decided we should increase the arms the Sunnis have, make them pledge to be loyal to us, and then let them take over the job of controling certain provinces--the really bad ones where they already seem to be strongly entrenched anyway. This should thrill the Shites who fear them and know they are the main group killing off the Shite majority. In a NYT interview today the military logic and safeguards were stressed.

NYT:

"With the four-month-old increase in American troops showing only modest success in curbing insurgent attacks, American commanders are turning to another strategy that they acknowledge is fraught with risk: arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to fight militants linked with Al Qaeda who have been their allies in the past."

Arming our enemies, the allies of Al Queda, the ones who have brutally killed our troops with ever weapon they can get their hands on, just doesn't make any sense to me. Apparently some of our Generals also have doubts.

"Americans officers acknowledge that providing weapons to breakaway rebel groups is not new in counterinsurgency warfare, and that in places where it has been tried before, including the French colonial war in Algeria, the British-led fight against insurgents in Malaya in the early 1950s, and in Vietnam, the effort often backfired, with weapons given to the rebels being turned against the forces providing them. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the Third Infantry Division and leader of an American task force fighting in a wide area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers immediately south of Baghdad, said at a briefing for reporters on Sunday that no American support would be given to any Sunni group that had attacked Americans. If the Americans negotiating with Sunni groups in his area had “specific information” that the group or any of its members had killed Americans, he said, “The negotiation is going to go like this: ‘You’re under arrest, and you’re going with me.’ I’m not going to go out and negotiate with folks who have American blood on their hands.”

In a report last year the the Sunni insurgency was discussed.

"...the New York Times reported that a classified U.S. government report said Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency had become self-sufficient financially, raising millions from oil smuggling, kidnapping and Islamic charities. The report did not say whether any money came from Saudi Arabia.

Allegations the insurgents have purchased shoulder-fired Strela missiles raise concerns that they are obtaining increasingly sophisticated weapons."

Geesh, if that's true then why do they need more weapons? Ir sounds like they've already built quite an arsenal already and the rich Saudis have been helping them out too. I hate to be blunt, but it does seem like there are better ways to use our taxpayers' dollars than this cockeyed notion of arming the Sunnis.. '

What will the pledge of loyalty sound like?

"I promise to do my duty to God and America (Allah please forgive me for this), to never ever pick up any of the powerful weapons the Americans have given me (hee hee) to harm them in any way. I also will not use the weapons I get from the Americans to do harm to my Shite brothers (the dogs). I swear to treat all the people in the provinces I will dominate just the same as any Governor in America would treat the people in his state. If I don't do this, may I lose the love and respect of my newfound brothers, the American military (hee hee). I also promise to juice things up with frequent reports about any Shite activities I suspect are anti-American. That way the American military can brag about how much more information they are receiving from us so called deadheads (may Allah spit on Duck Cheney's head)"