Our Troops Capture Top Iraqi Member Of Al Qaeda In Iraq

Another bad guy down.

BAGHDAD (AP) U-S commanders in Iraq report the arrest of the top Iraqi in Iraq’s branch of al-Qaida.
He’s identified as Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani (dah-OOD’ mahk-MOOD’ al-mah-sha-DAH’-nee) and the announcement today says he was captured on the Fourth of July in Mosul.
A U-S spokesman says al-Mashhadani is believed to be the most senior Iraqi in the group. Army Brigadier General Kevin Bergner says information from him indicates that the terror group’s foreign leaders have considerable influence over the Iraqi branch.
Bergner says al-Mashhadani served as an intermediary between the chief of al-Qaida-in-Iraq and the international group’s top leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri (AY’-muhn ahl-ZWAH’-ree).

This plays nicely into the current debate this country is having about Iraq. Many proponents of giving up in Iraq say that ending the war there (and inviting the slaughter of Iraqi citizens as various terrorist and insurgent groups rush to fill the power vacuum we’d leave behind) would allow us to focus on the “real” war on terror.
Yet if Iraq isn’t a part of the “real” war on terror, why are we capturing high-level al Qaeda leaders there? Why is al Qaeda’s #2 man Ayman al Zawahiri urging his terrorist followers to go to Iraq? Why has Osama bin Laden called Iraq the “central front” in the war on terror? Why is al Qaeda investing millions of dollars in funding and thousands in manpower to Iraq (leaving fewer resources with which to attack the west)?
Maybe because Iraq really is part of the war on terror, and anti-war politicians are just trying to define it as otherwise for the sake of winning the political war here at home by losing the real war in the middle east.