Gasps from al Qaeda

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The last days on Earth of Abu Osama al-Tunisi apparently were filled with anxiety: "We are desperate for your help," he said in a letter to al Qaeda chieftains.

A copy of the letter was found by U.S. troops sifting through the rubble of the building in Musayb, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, where on Sept. 25 al-Tunisi had been meeting with two local al Qaeda operatives when an F-16 cut their discussion short.

Al-Tunisi was a key member of the rapidly dwindling inner circle of Abu Ayoub al Masri, the al Qaeda chieftain in Iraq. Another key member, Abou Yaakoub al Masri, an intimate of Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, was killed Aug. 31 near the northern Baghdad suburb of Tarmiyah.

Al-Tunisi was responsible for bringing foreign al Qaeda recruits into Iraq and placing them in operational cells, U.S. military spokesmen said. That effort suffered a major blow when "Muthanna," the al Qaeda emir for the Iraq-Syrian border region, was killed in early September.

The two al Masris are both Egyptian. Al-Tunisi was, as his nom de guerre indicates, Tunisian. Found near the body of the late Muthanna was a list of 500 foreign al Qaeda fighters. More than 80 percent of the suicide bombings in Iraq have been conducted by foreigners, the U.S. military estimates. Yet Democrats continue to describe the conflict as a civil war.

Al-Tunisi and Muthanna were among 28 local, city or regional al Qaeda leaders killed or captured in September. Two other very big shots nailed last month were Muhammad al Afari, who was responsible for the bloody attack on the Kurdish Yazidi sect in August, and Abu Taghrid, who ran a car bomb network.

Al-Tunisi wasn't alone in calling for help. "Al Qaeda has lost half its leadership over the summer, and American intelligence collectors have amassed a huge number of desperate messages from al Qaeda leaders and operatives," said StrategyPage.

The beat goes on. On Oct. 2, U.S. and Iraqi forces arrested an al Qaeda financier in the Baghdad suburb of Kindi. The financier is said to have had $100 million to disburse to fund terror operations.

The collapse of al Qaeda's networks in Iraq is the chief reason both U.S. casualties and Iraqi civilian deaths plunged in September, despite an increased operations tempo.

"Terror attacks are down by more than half because al Qaeda keeps getting run out of their refuges, and, in desperation, keeps asking each other for help," StrategyPage said. "When the terrorists are unable to escape, they more frequently surrender, rather than fight to the death. This is a sign of falling morale."

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on top of Page One on Oct. 2 printed a story about the plunge in U.S. casualties. But this was an exception. Most news organizations mentioned the casualty plunge on inside pages, if at all. None that I am aware of has reported prominently on the devastating losses of the al Qaeda network in Iraq. "That the media are no longer much interested in Iraq is a sure sign things are going well there," said an Oct. 1 Investors Business Daily editorial.

As the death toll for both U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians plunged, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continued to talk about "rising levels of violence in Iraq." If the facts on the ground are uncongenial, make up your own.

British Mideast expert Bartle Bull thinks it soon will be impossible to ignore the good news from Iraq. In an article this month in the British magazine Prospect titled "Mission accomplished," Mr. Bull wrote: "With most Sunni factions now seeking a deal, the big questions in Iraq have been resolved positively. The country remains one, it has embraced democracy and avoided all-out civil war."

The Sunnis, even the ex-Ba'athists, have turned on al Qaeda and are seeking a deal, and the predominantly Shia government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is willing to make one, Mr. Bull said. More than 14,000 Sunnis in Anbar Province, once al Qaeda's stronghold, have joined the Iraqi army and police since the troop surge began.

"The Sunni insurgents have recognized that there is little point fighting a strong and increasingly skilled enemy — the United States — that is on the right side of Iraq's historical destiny and has a political leadership that ... responds to setbacks by trying harder," Mr. Bull said.

"There is even less point doing so when you are a discredited minority, as the Sunnis are after 35 years of Ba'athism followed by their disastrous insurgency, and the enemy [the United States] is in fact your main guarantor of a fair place at the national table."

Jack Kelly, a syndicated columnist, is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette.