Fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them, ummm, over there

We've been hearing from Rumsfeld and company for more than two years that the "insurgents" we are fighting in Iraq are Al Qaeda fighters from Pakistan and elsewhere who are falling for the "flypaper" trap cleverly set by America. They are flocking to Iraq by the thousands to fight Our Troops. Apparently our boots on the ground have a different picture of things.

Iraqis, rather than foreign fighters, now form the vast majority of the insurgents who are waging a ferocious guerrilla war against United States forces in Sunni western Iraq, American commanders have revealed.

Their conclusion, disclosed to the Sunday Telegraph in interviews over 10 days in battle-torn Anbar province, contradicts the White House message that outsiders are the principal enemy in Iraq.

Of 1,300 suspected insurgents arrested over the past five months in and around Ramadi, none has been a foreigner. Col John Gronski, senior officer in the town, Anbar's provincial capital, said that almost all insurgent fighting there was by Iraqis. Foreigners provided only money and logistical support.

Here's a phrase to keep in mind.

Col Gronski said the local nature of the insurgency meant that even the few civic leaders prepared to work with the Americans view the fighters as legitimate. "They see them as resistance. They don't view these local guys placing IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and firing mortars at us as insurgents."

Some Iraqis in Ramadi now adhere to Zarqawi's radical Islamist philosophy, but for most the insurgency is about removing the occupiers, Col Herbert said. "Their family and tribal honour has been impugned if we're on their ground. They're almost duty bound to fight."

We can keep trying to label these fighters and the corrupt portions of the "tame Iraqis" however we like. It doesn't matter to them. What matters is how they view themselves. You can get the New York Times to call them whatever you want for years on end, but as long as we're fighting a group of natives on their own soil who see us as having come in and taken their homes, they're never going to go away.

It's time to declare victory and go home.