Iraq - Suicide Bombers Hard To Come By

Strategy Page reports on how it's getting harder and harder for al Qaeda to get good help in Iraq.

May 11, 2005; Terrorists continue to use suicide bombers to kill large numbers of civilians. Three went off in Central Iraq today, killing fifty and wounding over a hundred. Security officials believe that the terrorists are working off an inventory of car and personal bombs, prepared just for this "offensive." But it's also been noted that the quality of the suicide bombers has declined. Some have turned out to be people who were mentally ill (and easy to convince to kill themselves). In other cases, the suicide bombers are just carrying or driving the explosives, which are set off by remote control by someone else. It's suspected that some of the drivers in these cases had signed up to move explosives, not be there when they went off. This sort of thing has been done during other suicide bomber campaigns, and is simply a sign of difficulty in recruiting suicide bombers competent, or dedicated enough, to do the deed completely by themselves.

And, as I noted in Iraq is not a civil war, there has not been one Iraqi suicide bomber.

U.S. and Iraqi authorities say suicide drivers are invariably foreign fighters. Officers here said they knew of no documented case in which a suicide attacker turned out to have been an Iraqi.

So, al Qaeda is hiring foreign truck drives to haul explosives around Iraq and then blowing them up. How long will that last when word gets out?
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