Finally! A washpol speaks to the reality of who's killing who in Iraq. This from Chuck Hagel in Robert Novak's column today:

What about claims by proponents of the Iraqi intervention that failure to stop the terrorists in Iraq will open the door to them in the American homeland?

"That's nonsense," Hagel replied. "I've never believed that. That's the same kind of rhetoric and thinking that neocons used to get us into this mess and everything that [Donald] Rumsfeld, [Paul] Wolfowitz, [Richard] Perle, [Douglas] Feith and the vice president all said. Nothing turned out the way they said it would."

It is "nonsense," Hagel said, because "Iraq is not embroiled in a terrorist war today." Hagel, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, cited "national intelligence" attributing "maybe 10 percent" of the insurgency and violence to al-Qaeda. Indeed, he described Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds as opposed to al-Qaeda: "They don't like the terrorists. What's happened in Anbar province is the tribes are finally starting to connect with us because al-Qaeda started killing some of their leadership and threatening their people. So the tribes now are at war with al-Qaeda."

Hagel aside, it seems that most GOP faithful (and Lieberman) got the memo last week that all talking points on Iraq and the new "surrender bill" (!!!!) should include mention of al-Qaeda, 9/11 and the terrorists returning to American soil as often as possible. In an interview on NPR last week, Mitch McConnell made so many references to the Big Three that it could have made for one heck of a Young Republicans Club drinking game. Lieberman brought those points - however inflated they be - home in an op-ed in the Post. All of this despite the fact that I have heard from various people whose job it is to know something about who's killing who in Iraq the same numbers, roughly, as Hagel mentioned: 10 percent.

SADDAM HATERS?
And none of these folks who are so quick to spout off about how al-Qaeda is operating in Iraq bring up the inconvenient truth that the only reason AQ is now operating in Iraq is because of the war! Previous to the invasion, Saddam desperately feared these jihadis because he knew they saw his rule as illegitimate and they were a group of fighters who would do anything to establish a universal Islamic caliphate (AQ believed that the only thing more dangerous to Islam than Israel and the US were the secular Islamic leaders in the Middle East.) That's according to a friend whose an expert on the Middle East. AQ hated Saddam more than us?! Well it's a good thing we got rid of HIM, then! Oh. wait.....crap.

Now all sorts of young idealist entrepreneurs are opening up their own franchise operations of AQ - in Iraq's golden arches are known as Al Qa'ida in Iraq (AQI) -- led by Zarqawi until June 2006 but now ledby Abu Ayuub Al-Masri. Ironic, or just plain unfortunate? You decide.