al-Qaeda is not fighting the US in Iraq anymore. Their brutality and fascist blood lust have turned the Muslim Arab street against them, so now they battle mainstream Muslims. Those fighting hardest against al-Qaeda right now in Iraq are their one-time allies and supporters who would rather die fighting than let al-Qaeda in their midst again. And al-Qaeda knows it has lost Iraq if the population opposes them – so they have targeted the Muslims of Iraq for death and mayhem:

Suspected al Qaeda militants shot dead 14 people in the predominantly Sunni Arab town of Muqdadiya north of Baghdad on Sunday and torched at least 12 shops in the town, Iraqi police said.

In a wave of violence which followed an al Qaeda pledge to step up attacks, a suicide bomber also killed six people at a cafe in the northern town of Tuz Khurmato. In Baghdad, seven people were killed in three separate bombings.

An al Qaeda led group, the Islamic State in Iraq, said on Saturday it was launching a new phase of attacks to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which started late last week.

Massacring Muslims during the Muslim Holy Month. al-Qaeda is a foolish as it is barbaric. The Iraqis will not sit by and let these foreigners kill their people. Iraq is not filled with lambs, and it has one of the highest literacy rates in the region. These people will not be cowed by thugs. Don’t believe me? Watch how fast al-Qaeda is exposed to Sunni, Iraqi and American forces:

The U.S. military also announced on Sunday it had caught a suspected al Qaeda militant, Fallah al-Jumayli, believed to be responsible for the killing last week of a key Sunni Arab tribal leader in Iraq’s Anbar province.

Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who met Bush two weeks ago in Anbar, was killed in a bomb attack on Thursday near his home. He led an alliance of Sunni Arab tribes that worked with U.S. troops to push al Qaeda out of much of the vast desert area.

“Intelligence reports indicate al-Jumayli is involved in a plot to kill key leaders in the tribal awakening,” the U.S. statement said, referring to the tribal alliance.

Since al-Qaeda has turned its sites on fellow Muslims and lost so much ground in Iraq, there seems to be a change of heart in the region which supplied its fighters. It seems al-Qaeda’s reinforcements are drying up:

he number of foreign fighters entering Iraq from Syria has decreased noticeably in recent months, corresponding to a similar decrease in suicide bombings and other attacks by the group al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials.

“There is an early indication of a trend,” said Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, in an interview. Border crossings from Syria that averaged 80 to 90 a month have fallen to “half or two-thirds of that over the last two or three months,” Petraeus said.

Is it Syrian efforts finally bearing fruit? I doubt it – too many ways to get across the border. I suspect as news of al-Qaeda’s atrocities against Muslims has rippled through the Arab world (they have the word of the Iraqis and supposedly plenty of video to back it up) I wager the horrors of al-Qaeda have ripped the facade away for a lot of Muslims. It also doesn’t help when al-Qaeda is getting its butt whooped as well. The war for Islam’s soul is raging inside every Muslim household witnessing these atrocities and losses by al-Qaeda. It is just taking time to come out in the open as actual results. The world is not racing to al-Qaeda’s side – not by a long shot. They will not be the ones who topple America.

al-Qaeda should have shut down the violence months ago and used a US withdrawal or troop reduction as propaganda to claim the chased America back to America. But they couldn’t stop themselves. They had to savage the Iraqis because, at the core of this, they are addicted to brutality and the sick rush they get when beating down other human beings. These are thugs, vampires, who get their rocks of doing obscenely brutal things to people. That is why they cannot control their destiny anymore. But we can, and we will stay to keep supporting those opposed to al-Qaeda. And we will see the end of al-Qaeda in Iraq soon enough because of the pace at which they are self destructing.

Update: I really don’t give any credence to politicians looking for votes in 2008 who express their views of what is happening in Iraq. Neither do I care what the biased media thinks. And no one cares what the far left thinks on matters beyond their grasp. But one group carry more weight than our people on the ground, and that is the view of people of Iraq themselves:

‘You Have Liberated a People’
Iraqis of all sects report progress, not “civil war.”

Al Qaeda and its Arab jihadists had found sanctuary and support in the Anbar; they had recruited the “criminal elements” and the “lowly,” they had brought zeal and bigotry unknown to the Iraqis. Initially welcomed, they began to impose their own tyranny. They declared haram (impermissible) the normal range of social life. They banned cigarettes, they married the daughters of decent families without the permission of their elders. They violated the great code of decent society by “shedding the blood of travelers on routine voyages.” The prayer leaders of mosques were bullied, then murdered.

Abu Reisha and a small group of like-minded men, he said, came together to challenge al Qaeda.

….

“We may differ with our American friends about tactics, I might not see eye to eye with them on all matters. But my message to them is one of appreciation and gratitude,” he [Maliki] said. ” To them I say, you have liberated a people, brought them into the modern world. They used to live in fear and now they live in liberty. Iraqis were cut off from the modern world, and thanks to American intervention we now belong to the world around us. We used to be decimated and killed like locusts in Saddam’s endless wars, and we have now come into the light.

…

“Historically we are winning.” The words were those of Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. This is a scion of Baghdad Shiite aristocracy, at ease with French and English, a man whose odyssey had taken him from Marxism to the Baath, then finally to the Islamism of the Supreme Islamic Council. … Mr. Mahdi was not apologetic about what Iraq offers the United States by way of justification for the blood and treasure and the sacrifice: “Little more than two decades ago, in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution and the Lebanon War of 1982, the American position in this region was exposed and endangered. Look around you today: Everyone seeks American protection and patronage. The line was held in Iraq; perhaps America was overly sanguine about the course of things in Iraq. But that initial optimism now behind us, the war has been an American victory. All in the region are romancing the Americans, even Syria and Iran in their own way.”

For the Sunni-ruled states in the region, he counseled an acceptance of the new Iraq. He looked with pride on his country, and on his city. He saw beyond Baghdad’s daily grief. “Baghdad is the heart of the Arab world, this was the hothouse of Arab philosophy and science and literature.”

The doom and gloom of the liberal anti-war movement is nothing but fantasy. Reality is where we need to focus our attention. H/T RealClearPolitics.