ARE ALL INSURGENTS IN IRAQ TIED TO AL QAEDA?

Even the renowned and admired John Burns of The New York Times refers today to the surge campaign of U.S. forces in and around Baghdad as being against "Al Qaeda." Wait! There must be over 50 different insurgent groups in Iraq fighting the U.S. occupation and the present Al Maliki government. Yet Burns accepts the spin of the U.S. military that they are going after "Qaeda." Here's John Burns in his opening lead:

"The operational commander of troops battling to drive fighters with Al Qaeda from Baquba said Friday that 80 percent of the top Qaeda leaders in the city fled before the American-led offensive began earlier this week. He compared their flight with the escape of Qaeda leaders from Falluja ahead of an American offensive that recaptured that city in 2004."

Contrast the sloppy approach of John Burns and The New York Times with Thomas Ricks in The Washington Post today. Instead of describing the target of U.S. operations as "Qaeda," Ricks is careful to say "insurgents." Writes Ricks:

""The major U.S. offensive launched last weekend against insurgents in and around Baghdad has significantly expanded the military's battleground in Iraq -- "a surge of operations," and no longer just of troops, as the second-ranking U.S. commander there said yesterday -- but it has renewed concerns about whether even the bigger U.S. troop presence there is large enough.""

Why is this difference between The NY Times and Washington Post important? Because Burns implicitly backs up the web of lies spun by Bush and Cheney that the War in Iraq is merely an extension of the "War on Terror" against the people who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center. If Al Qaeda staged and executed 9/11, and if it is Qaeda whom the U.S. is fighting in Iraq, then the War in Iraq not only makes sense but is morally justifiable and even required.

However, we all know that Iraq had nothing to do with the attack on 9/11, no matter how much Bush and Cheney say the opposite. Burns eats up the spin of the military briefers, Ricks avoids regurgitating the propaganda.

Therefore, for John Burns to describe all insurgency in Iraq as Qaeda or Qaeda-inspired is to wrongly conflate all insurgent groups down to one. Bush and Cheney may want to do so, but the result would be to give readers the wrong information about the War in Iraq.