Suicide bombers in Iraq

Another day of 'insurgents' killing Iraqis in Iraq:

Baghdad (Reuters) - Four suicide bombs killed at least 66 people in Iraq on Wednesday, the latest attacks in an escalating campaign of guerrilla violence that has killed nearly 400 Iraqis since a new government was unveiled two weeks ago.

In Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle among a crowd of mainly Shi'ite migrant laborers from southern Iraq who had gathered to look for work. [Italics added.]

This, as supported by a section of the Western left. Here's an interesting piece on the bombers, and on those fighting them on behalf of the electors of Iraq and of the government they elected democratically and of the project of democratic consolidation and progress in that country - as supported by people of genuinely progressive outlook. The article starts with the bombers and those who command them, then goes on to cite the assessment of coalition spokespeople:

Coalition officials have acknowledged concern at the continually changing nature of insurgent tactics, and at the difficulty of dealing with suicide bombers. Yet some officers have seen encouraging signs in the recent pattern of assaults that the insurgents are running out of military options.

"They started out attacking the coalition, then they shifted to Iraqi security forces. Now they're aiming at any Iraqi civilian who might have an interest in the democratic future of Iraq," one senior Washington official said.

"In one sense it is quite satisfactory that their credentials have been exposed as anti a democratic Iraq and not just anti the coalition occupation."

British and American intelligence sources believe the insurgency has now been reduced to three identifiable elements: former supporters of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime who see no future for themselves under a Shi'ite-dominated government; foreign jihadists - Islamic militants committed to holy war; and local criminals whose muscle and weapons can be hired for $100 a day.

"We've moved a long way from dealing with the trained warriors who went through Al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan," said one officer. "We're now seeing plenty of young yobbos who are wielding rocketpropelled grenades on an opportunistic basis. And we're making life harder for them by a combination of good tactics, techniques and procedures."

The coalition claims to be benefiting from rapidly improving intelligence, mainly derived from Iraqis who are dismayed by insurgent violence and are increasingly willing to co-operate with coalition troops.

See also these two items.

And then, in the same general ballpark, there's this from Steven Poole, reviewing a book by Phil Rees:

They have all been called "terrorists", and Rees's simple but powerful framework for the book is to ask them what they themselves understand by that term, and how they justify the killing of civilians. The normal answer, of course, is that they consider themselves at war; one of the functions of the official appellation "terrorist", by contrast, is to deny them the status of soldiers.

A small elision there. Neither being at war nor being a soldier justifies the deliberate killing of civilians. Poole must know this. He just writes it as if the point might be obscure.