Bush commutes Libby sentence

[Jester]

Where are you getting that from? I would be interested in seeing a source for such a statistic as I know my general impression has been that of Kandrathe's: the war that is being fought is mostly against non-Iraqis or Iraqis that have been supported by outside groups (Iran, other countries, terrorist organizations, etc).

First off, I'm not intending 99/100 to be an academic assessment. If it turns out to be, say, 87.4%, or 99.8%, or 93.14159%, it doesn't really matter to me. What I mean to say, substantively, rather than just as a sarcastic snipe, is that the vast majority of the force opposing the US occupation in Iraq is Iraqi. Foreign fighters comprise only a small portion of the resistance, although they are likely disproportionately involved in suicide bombings and other high-profile acts of terrorism.

I must confess, I have not kept up with the demographic particulars of the resistance. Every description I've read of them breaks them into fairly obvious categories (Former Ba'athists, Sunni/Shi'a militias, anti-occupation resistance groups, moderate islamists, hard-core islamists, or some similiar) all of which seem to be predominantly Iraqi, unless they include a separate group for foreign fighters, usually numbered between one and four thousand, with total resistance strength somewhere from 20k to 200k. Even taking the maximum and minimum estimates, that would still yield 3/4.

A quick google yields the following, BBC numbers. They are roughly consistent with everything else I've seen, if perhaps a bit on the generous side for giving foreign insurgent numbers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5052138.stm

The proportion given is "less than 10% foreign fighters."

In short, while every "impression" that comes off American news, and from the talking heads gives the impression that this is a "foreign resistance" problem, I have yet to see anything to convince me that the resistance is not overwhelmingly, to the tune of 90% or more, Iraqi.

If they are recieving support from Iran, Saudi Arabia, or who knows where else, doesn't matter to me in that sense. Iraqis are Iraqis.

If someone has figures that indicate that Iraqi participation is not the overwhelming majority, like say less than 80%, I would be interested to see it, as it would contradict everything I have understood about this conflict so far.

-Jester