Documents discovered in al Qaeda safe houses in Iraq lament how poorly the war in Iraq is going for the terrorists:

Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an “extraordinary crisis”. Last year's mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military “created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight”. The terrorist group's security structure suffered “total collapse”.

These are the words not of al-Qaeda's enemies but of one of its own leaders in Anbar province — once the group's stronghold. They were set down last summer in a 39-page letter seized during a US raid on an al-Qaeda base near Samarra in November.

The US military released extracts from that letter yesterday along with a second seized in another November raid that is almost as startling.

That second document is a bitter 16-page testament written last October by a local al-Qaeda leader near Balad, north of Baghdad. “I am Abu-Tariq, emir of the al-Layin and al-Mashahdah sector,” the author begins. He goes on to describe how his force of 600 shrank to fewer than 20.

The last holdouts who still believe the surge hasn't worked are mostly Democratic office-holders.

The surviving al Qaeda leaders who organized the September 11 attacks aren't faring so well either. Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and his confederates are being charged in connection with the attacks and will be tried my military commissions and potentially executed.

I'm not particularly happy about this. The "defendants" will have a right to counsel, enjoy a presumption of innocence and can appeal their convictions all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. This strikes me as another step in the transformation of a military campaign into a law enforcement effort. If these terrorists have exhausted their usefulness as sources of intelligence, the course most consistent with military history would be to shoot them. We are far down the path of giving lawyers priority over soldiers in fighting the war against the jihadists.

A sign of things to come: the AP article linked above is largely about waterboarding; we can expect more of the same in the ongoing news coverage of the military tribunals.

Posted by John at 2:49 PM  |    |