From Huffington Post
Insurgents Assert Control Over Town Near Syrian Border (Washington Post, September 6, 2005)TAL AFAR,Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces have encircled the insurgent stronghold … (MSNBC, September 8, 2005)
Insurgents Attack Polling Stations in Iraq (ABC News, October 15, 2005)
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents using suicide and roadside bombs killed … (AP, October 6, 2005)
Sometimes they're called "rebels." Sometimes they’re called "the resistance." Who are they rebelling against? What are they resisting? What motivates them? What are their goals? In short, who the Fuhkarthey?*
After "mission accomplished," and major military operations ceased, when the chaos, the resistance, the new war, the real war began, the resistance was supposed to be diehard Saddam loyalists. A deck of cards was issued. When all the faces that matched the deck were collected, it was really going to be over. Over forty of them were caught. But it wasn't over.
The theory that it was all a clever plot - Saddam planned to lose the regular war quickly and then unleash a guerrilla war while he himself hid in a hole in the ground - has recently resurfaced. It was one of the cover stories in the 9/26/05 issue of Time Magazine.
But even if that's true, it doesn’t explain what Saddam loyalists might actually hope to achieve. He's not coming back.
So maybe they’re Ba'thists. What's a Ba'thist and what do Ba'thists want? Does anybody know? Is it something we don’t like? How much of it don’t we like? Whatever it is, do they really think they can get it?
Another theory was that the rebels were foreign fighters. While some of them are, nobody believes that the resistance would exist with just foreign fighters or, more significantly, that the resistance would disappear if they all went to their respective homes.
