hey

[davipu]

side question, what's the ratio of the nationalitys of the "insurgents" I read some whare that 95% of them wern't from Irak to begin with.

[Roadstergal]

Which leads me to ask - how do they get that data?  They don't have control of the insurgency, so I dunno how they can estimate even how many of them there are, let alone where they're from.

[davipu]

i'd be guessing but probably from the prisoners.

[Jake D]

I think the borders are wide open, or were.  

Insurgency sucks and so does blowing stuff up.  You make a good point.  If the insurgents are not even from Iraq, then that takes away the "they just want us to get the f*ck out" theory.

[Roadstergal]

Insurgency sucks and so does blowing stuff up.  You make a good point.  If the insurgents are not even from Iraq, then that takes away the "they just want us to get the f*ck out" theory.

Not really.  We're in many countries over there; this just happens to be our biggest and most vulnerable presence.  And there's the encroachment factor - if someone invades Oregon, I'm not about to say "Oh, Oregon; nothing for me to worry about."

I'd imagine prisoner samples are way off of representative.

[indestructibleman]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/06/10/face.insurgency/

Recent independent studies on Iraqi insurgents say most suicide bombers are from outside Iraq.
...
One senior U.S. military official provided CNN with a nationality snapshot of fighters captured during Baghdad's anti-insurgency push, Operation Lightning. Of the 1,000 people captured, 50 were non-Iraqi. Most were from Sudan, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

so, on the one hand we've got foreign suicide bombers (who weren't there before the war) killing Iraqis (and Americans) left and right.

on the other hand, we've got many thousands of Iraqis who seem to resent the fact that we've turned their home into a warzone and have decided to fight against us.