"Al-Qaeda in Iraq":"microscopic"

In "The Myth of AQI," (in Washington Monthly, with reference thanks to big-time blogger Kevin Drum), a former reporter on Iraq for Stars and Stripes magazine all but verifies what we’ve been saying for a year: the explosion of rhetoric about “Al Qaeda in Iraq,” like the emergence of the phrase, “weapons of mass destruction” when the administration knew its case about nuclear weapons was falling apart, has been just too perfect.
from July, “The ‘al Qaeda in Iraq’ propaganda exposed: Bloggers make stuff happen?’ and from September 24, 2006, “News flash! republicans test-market new meme, mainstream media regurgitates it”)

Our emphasis was on how linking the Sunni insurgency to “Al Qaeda” served the interests of Bush in reinforcing the false notion that the Iraq War was part of the GWOT (the acronym for the "global war on terror"). Tilghman goes further into the variety of motivations for using the term, pointing out how the Shia-dominated Iraqi government can maintain ostensible reach-out efforts to the Sunnis by deflecting blame for attacks from the general Sunni insurgency; how the insurgency can deflect blame from themselves for actions that claim civilian lives; how Bin Laden himself can use alleged "al Qaeda in Iraq" activity as a recruiting tool; and how the press, largely confined in the Green Zone, can avoid admitting how limited its sources of accurate information are in the country.

For Bush, though, as Tilghman says, “It is perhaps one of the last rhetorical crutches the president has left to lean on.”

This scenario has become common. After a strike, the military rushes to point the finger at al-Qaeda, even when the actual evidence remains hazy and an alternative explanation—raw hatred between local Sunnis and Shiites—might fit the circumstances just as well. The press blasts such dubious conclusions back to American citizens and policy makers in Washington, and the incidents get tallied and quantified in official reports, cited by the military in briefings in Baghdad. The White House then takes the reports and crafts sound bites depicting AQI as the number one threat to peace and stability in Iraq. (In July, for instance, at Charleston Air Force Base, the president gave a speech about Iraq that mentioned al-Qaeda ninety-five times.)

By now, many in Washington have learned to discount the president's rhetorical excesses when it comes to the war. But even some of his harshest critics take at face value the estimates provided by the military about AQI's presence. Politicians of both parties point to such figures when forming their positions on the war. All of the top three Democratic presidential candidates have argued for keeping some American forces in Iraq or the region, citing among other reasons the continued threat from al-Qaeda.

But what if official military estimates about the size and impact of al-Qaeda in Iraq are simply wrong? Indeed, interviews with numerous military and intelligence analysts, both inside and outside of government, suggest that the number of strikes the group has directed represent only a fraction of what official estimates claim. Further, al-Qaeda's presumed role in leading the violence through uniquely devastating attacks that catalyze further unrest may also be overstated.
Having been led astray by flawed prewar intelligence about WMDs, official Washington wants to believe it takes a more skeptical view of the administration's information now. Yet Beltway insiders seem to be making almost precisely the same mistakes in sizing up al-Qaeda in Iraq.