Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Still in opposition?

It's also worth hearing what Gen. Anthony Zinni said back in Clinton's time. From an August 2000 UPI piece, which perhaps explained why Clinton was hesitant to arm the Iraqi opposition faster:

In testimony before both houses of Congress, he said the administration had identified about 90 opposition groups but that "they have little, if any, viability." ...
"Even if we had Saddam gone, we could end up with 15, 20, or 90 groups competing for power," the general said.

Now compare that estimate with the figure from Toby Dodge from a recently CSM piece:

... he warns that the insurgency itself is made up of 60 different, mostly autonomous, groups, and that Mr. Zarqawi - with just 200 loyalists, who have claimed some of the worst atrocities in Iraq in the past year - is a "fringe player."

I wonder how many of these insurgent groups are related to the opposition groups identified earlier.

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