Abu Nawall, a captured al-Qaeda in Iraq leader, said he didn't join the Sunni insurgent group here to kill Americans or to form a Muslim caliphate. He signed up for the cash.
"I was out of work and needed the money," said Abu Nawall, the nom de guerre of an unemployed metal worker who was paid as much as $1,300 a month as an insurgent. He spoke in a phone interview from an Iraqi military base where he is being detained. "How else could I support my family?"
You've got to be kidding me. Here I thought we were in an ideological struggle against people with a twisted view of religion, and some of them are simply trying to earn money?
This begs the question: Is this one of the main reasons why the insurgency seems to be dying down? Are they running out of money? Are they finding out that you can't provide for your family if you are dead?
Col. Twitty seems to think so:
Col. Stephen Twitty, commander of U.S. forces in Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province, said the dismantling of insurgent financing networks is the primary reason that violent attacks here have dropped from about 18 a day last year to about eight a day now.
"We're starting to hear a lot of chatter about the insurgents running out of money," said Twitty, of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. "They are not able to get money to pay people for operations."
So if the unemployment rate goes down, the insurgency dies with it? It certainly seems that way.
With them running low of money, theoretically, the violence should go down to the point of that of a major US city, with occasional murders and other violent crimes.
But this also may be a culmination of a lot of little things that added up to a main goal of shutting them down.
That would mean that the new tactics of commanders in the field are working and that Democrats owe a big apology to General Petraeus and others for calling them "political hacks" and "General Betray Us".
It seems that they are doing a bang up job and getting the country back on it's feet, which is what their original goal was.
Travis
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