the outcome of the election

[kandrathe]

... 

My only point continues to be simply that we cannot dismiss all resisting Iraqis as terrorists, whether their war is conducted with conventional weapons or not.
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I agree with you. I've listened a few times to a BBC correspondent who was with the terrorists in Falluja. His story was that the resistance was made up of an unholy alliance between followers of Zaraqawi and Baathist generals.

When the war started we did not classify the enemy as terrorists, and this resistance is partly holdovers from that struggle. But, there is also a contingent of terrorists recruited from the surrounding region, as well as some number of home grown disaffected. The Baathist generals, and terrorists would like to refer to themselves as freedom fighters. Their recruitment hinges on how effectively they can convice Iraqi's that their goal is to repel the infidel, but to me that rings hollow.

Kidnapping and beheading aid workers or truck drivers, suicide bombing non-military targets (like the hotels, or UN) or even the long lines of young Iraqi boys who are lined up to apply for police or military jobs. Even if you consider the police or soldiers as viable targets for the struggle, these boys are not yet trained or even registered. It is a massacre of non-combatants just the same. These victims came to the police stations in a desire to see peace and prosperity return to thair nation, and to provide for their families. It is convenient to label anyone who does anything other than join the resistance as aiding the enemy.

The sooner the Iraqi's can do for themselves, the sooner we can leave. But, the resistance (terrorists and baathists) are not interested, as they proclaim, in repeling the infidel. They want to see the current structures that are emerging dismantled in order to erect one sympathetic to their cause. The last thing they are fighting for is freedom.