With a national vote on a new Iraqi constitution scheduled for October 15, Sunni thugs coddled under Saddam's deposed regime, and al Qaeda terrorists are going all out to intimidate Iraqis - Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds - into voting against the constitution or sitting out this historic opportunity. Unidentified "insurgents" killed five Shiite school teachers (of Sunni students). In Baquoba, 30 miles north of Baghdad, nine Iraqis applying for police jobs were killed by a suicide bomber, and 21 more applicants were wounded in the blast. In another last gasp measure, al Qaeda in Iraq troops are distributing so-called "death letters" warning residents of several far western Iraqi towns to leave, or be beheaded. U.S. military sources say the foreign al Qaeda terrorists, who typically enter Iraq through Syria, have been pushed back west from Ramadi and Fallujah, where their dominance was undermined by strong U.S.-Iraqi attacks. A major U.S.-Iraqi offensive is planned for the western region where the "death letters" are being circulated. Though al Qaeda in Iraq hasn't been out out of business yet, progress has been steady. The Christian Science Monitor reports here on the killing of al Qaeda in Iraq's second-in-command, Abdullah Abu Azzam, and further inroads by U.S. and Iraqi forces against al Qaeda in Iraq.

(Al Qaeda in Iraq. Um, yeah. That's their name. Any questions?).

There are other signs, from Europe, of all places, of intensified vigilance against West-hating, liberty-hating Muslim extremists. French authorities are questioning, for the second, day a group of Algerian Muslim extremists suspected of new bomb plots involving the Paris subway system and other public facilities. One detainee was a key figure in 1995 subway bombing which left nine dead in France. More here from an Agence France Presse report, which also notes the detention by authorities in Milan yesterday of 11 men believed to be members of a terrorist cell. Italy has been conducting extensive surveillance and intelligence gathering on possible Muslim extremist terrorists and support networks, as detailed in the article.

Funny thing here: France and Italy have hardly been at the forefront of the war in Iraq. They are not the Great Satan. Yet, with just cause, they are now every bit as engaged as the U.S. and England in preventing Islamist terrorists from killing innocents in their lands.

Meanwhile, Osama's border cave entourage has been downsized; and his communications network is looking kind of, ah, 12th Century.

TECHNORATI TAGS: IRAQ, CONSTITUTION, TERRORISTS

TO COMMENT: The regular "comment" feature is not in operation. E-mail comments to address under "Contact" on main page masthead, and I'll add them, here.

Tom Rekdal: The Islamist plot to bomb various sites in Paris, unlike the Madrid and London attacks, makes no sense as part of a grand strategy to expel American power from the Middle East by first stripping away the support of our European allies. France never was such an ally. My guess is that the Paris plot has more to do with changing French policy toward the present government of Algeria, which Islamists still seek to destroy.

Whatever their motives, it is a blunder. As Daniel Pipes has frequently pointed out, attacks on the American or European homelands only awaken a slumbering political class, without genuinely intimidating anyone.

I wish I could be as optimistic about events in Iraq. But it becomes increasingly difficult to accept the official version of the insurgency--as merely a collection of Baathist dead-enders in league with foreign religious fanatics. It is all of that, of course, but it would not be growing in potency without large-scale support within the Sunni Arab population as well.

There are already news reports of an incipient civil war getting under way, as Iraqis who find no security from the Americans or their own government seek the protection of tribal militia. If the Sunni Arab population rejects the new constitution, it will be hard to paper over this conflict. What is our role in a three-way civil war, if that is what develops? Do we really have a vital national interest in taking sides with the largest population group just because it has the most votes? Even if it is a largely pro-Iranian faction?

I would much prefer to see us try to protect the little islands of stability and democracy that have already appeared in Kurdistan and some parts of southern Iraq, rather than take sides in a conflict we cannot control. Yet even this more modest goal may be beyond the capacities of the Bush administration, which is already giving off signals that it seeks any withdrawal that does not look like defeat.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 27, 2005 04:08 PM