Word: itely
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...city of Basra, he persisted with the ruse, even though the Americans suspected him of being a key player in the Jan. 20 attack on U.S . forces in Karbala that left five soldiers dead. But eventually he cracked and began talking, revealing glimpses into the shifting world of Shi'ite militias in Iraq...
...captive's name is Ali Musa Daqduq. American military officials say he is a senior operative from Hizballah, the Shi'ite militia of Lebanon. According to the Americans, Daqduq joined Hizballah in 1983 and rose through the ranks to impressive heights. Then, in 2005, his superiors sent him on a journey to Iran to work with the Quds Force, an elite Iranian paramilitary organization known around the Middle East for its terrorist activities. The Iranian regime has long been a patron of Hizballah and its activities in Lebanon. In Tehran, Daqduq allegedly received orders from Quds Force leaders to settle...
...just sectarian slaughter but outright anarchy as well. "Our immediate concern," says a senior Arab diplomat, "is that sending a signal of complete withdrawal could encourage some elements in every faction in every political group that they can now impose their own agenda. It would be not only Shi'ite versus Sunni ... but [war] inside each community itself. The worst case is a Somalia-ization of Iraq...
...There is no debate about why: in the wake of an American pullout, Baghdad would be quickly dominated by Shi'ite militias largely unbloodied by the American campaign. Already, well-armed security forces that pose as independent are riddled with militiamen who take direction from Shi'ite leaders. Death-squad killings of Sunnis would rise. Against such emboldened forces, Sunni insurgents and elements of Saddam Hussein's former regime would retaliate with their weapon of choice: car-bomb attacks against Shi'ite markets, shrines, police stations and recruiting depots...
...Anthony Cordesman, a security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the U.S. military estimates that al-Qaeda in Iraq - a group thought to number several thousand - accounts for only about 15% of the attacks in Iraq. (Other Sunni groups account for 70%, with Shi'ite militias responsible for the remaining 15%.) But, Cordesman says, those attacks are the most deadly and "probably do the most damage in pushing Iraq toward civil war." At the moment, al-Qaeda in Iraq is valuable to Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, even though the links...