This Guardian piece by Seumas Milne details a new alliance among Iraqi “resistance” factions. Apparently the alliance, which is non-Baathist and non-Qaeda, is ready to come “out of the shadows” and position itself as a legitimate player, with offices abroad and everything.
Harry’s Place takes issue with Milne’s tone and approach in what is supposed to be a hard news story, and they have a point: Milne can hardly contain his enthusiasm for this new “Political Office for the Iraqi Resistance,” which is said to include “Iraqi Hamas, the 1920 Revolution Brigades and the new Ansar al-Sunna, [as well as] the powerful Jaish (army) al-Islami, Jaish al-Mujahideen, Jama’ and Jaish al-Rashideen.” These groups are not interested in attacking civilians, they say. That doesn’t preclude them from being dogmatists and assassins.
“Our position is that there are two kinds of people in Iraq: not Sunni and Shia, Kurdish and Arab, Muslim and Christian, but those who are with the occupation and those who are against it,” says a spokesman for the 1920 Revolution Brigades. OK, then, so why doesn’t Milne mention these two NY Times reports [$] detailing the cooperation of 1920 Brigade members with U.S. forces in battles against al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia? Granted, the NYT stories leave some ambiguity as to whether these are former or current 1920s members. But you’d think Milne would want to clear that up, explain if there’s been a split, or as Harry’s suggests, seek possible insight from a U.S. battalion that’s been cultivating the 1920s people. In short, any reference to any previous reporting on the 1920 Revolution Brigades would have been quite helpful. But the Guardian chose to run a press release by a man who had penned a love letter to the “resistance” in 2004.
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