Al Qaeda Cannibalizing?

Fox News

A native Iraqi and Middle East expert says the Iraqi insurgency independent of Al Qaeda is being slowly and surely defeated. Nibras Kazimi has worked with the Iraqi National Congress and the country's de-Baathification Commission. He writes in the New York Sun that U.S. and Iraqi military pressure has left insurgents feeling "demoralized, disillusioned and hunted."

He says Al Qaeda is cannibalizing smaller groups and continues to grow. But he says, "Al Qaeda is getting a serious beating as the Americans improve in intelligence gathering and partner with more reliable Iraqi forces." He calls the recent trend a "major accomplishment."

But Kazimi cautions that Al Qaeda terror will continue for many years because the group "will remain oblivious to all evidence of the insurgency's eventual defeat." And he has advice for presumptive new multi-national forces commander David Petraeus — saying the general should "allow what works to keep working and to improve on it" — rather than test unproved theories of counterinsurgency.