Saturday, July 02, 2005

Can you call people who enter a foreign country uninvited and blow things up, insurgents? Our media does.

Most suicide bombers in Iraq are foreigners

The vast majority of suicide attackers in Iraq are thought to be foreigners — mostly Saudis and other Gulf Arabs — and the trend has become more pronounced this year with North Africans also streaming in to carry out deadly missions, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

The bombers are recruited from Sunni communities, smuggled into Iraq from Syria after receiving religious indoctrination, and then quickly bundled into cars or strapped with explosive vests and sent to their deaths, the officials told The Associated Press. The young men are not so much fighters as human bombs — a relatively small but deadly component of the Iraqi insurgency.


My impression was that suicide bombers were causing by far the most deaths in Iraq. This last sentence seems to want to explain them away as relatively unimportant.

Also, can we call this the Iraqi insurgency if the majority of the damage is inflicted by non-Iraqis? Words mean a lot and the American people shouldn't be getting the impression that this insurgency is "popular" or of the local people.

Of course all this may be news to MSNBC, but the Washington Post reported this a month and a half ago, and our military has been saying this for a lot longer than that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes. One definition of an insurgent is someone who rebels against civil authority. It does not necessarily have to be one's own civil authority, although the word 'insurgent' is also used to define that situation as well.

BTW, the President routinely refers to insurgents and terrorists being defeated at Iraq's borders before they enter Iraq from other countries.