From the most recent polls conducted in Iraq:

Growing approval for attacks on US-led forces has not been accompanied by any significant support for al Qaeda. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden are rejected by overwhelming majorities of Shias and Kurds and large majorities of Sunnis.

Overall 94 percent have an unfavorable view of al Qaeda, with 82 percent expressing a very unfavorable view. Of all organizations and individuals assessed in this poll, it received the most negative ratings. The Shias and Kurds show similarly intense levels of opposition, with 95 percent and 93 percent respectively saying they have very unfavorable views.

~~~

Views of Osama bin Laden are only slightly less negative. Overall 93 percent have an unfavorable view, with 77 percent very unfavorable. Very unfavorable views are expressed by 87 percent of Kurds and 94 percent of Shias. Here again, the Sunnis are negative, but less unequivocally?71 percent have an unfavorable view (23% very), and 29 percent a favorable view (3% very).

President Bush spent an entire speech earlier this month trying to sell the tired product tying Iraq into the war against al Qaeda. Central to this latest fearmongering is the theme that if we were to withdraw from Iraq, somehow the country would fall under the dominion of al Qaeda, which would then carry out its evil plot to force Michelle Malkin to wear the hijab and worship Mohammed:

Here is what al Qaeda says they will do if they succeed in driving us out of Iraq: The terrorist Zawahiri has said that al Qaeda will proceed with “several incremental goals. The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of Caliphate? The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq. . . .”

Bin Ladin may be the one man more loathed in Iraq than George Bush — which is not surprising, since his organization has targeted both Kurds and Shia, who make up perhaps 80% of the population, and have purposefully drawn Iraq’s Sunnis into sectarian conflict which has claimed many Sunni lives.

How the hell is Osama going to turn Iraq into his private Caliphate, when his Wahhibist organization considers the Shia, who make up 60% of the people, to be heretics ripe for slaughter? 98 percent of Iraq’s Shia have an unfavorable view of al Qaeda, and the vast majority are very unfavorable towards the organization. In any conflict with Sunni al Qaeda, Iraq’s Shia population could expect broad support from Shiite Iran, a larger, more populous country than all of Iraq, with vastly greater wealth and military resources than al Qaeda. The prospects for bin Ladin turning Iraq into al Qaeda’s caliphate are nil, even if he had the support of Iraq’s Sunni minority.

Which he doesn’t.

As noted above, this same polling shows that al Qaeda and bin Ladin have no solid base of support in Iraq. Even Iraq’s Sunni population overwhelmingly — 77% — dislikes al Qaeda, albeit not as intensely as the Shia and Kurdish populations. And what little support al Qaeda has among the Sunnis stems largely from their role in attacking US and coalition occupation forces who are battling native insurgents.

Bush’s ability to instill fear among Americans relies largely on his dumbing down the discourse into an incomprehensible mishmosh of psuedo-fact and inflated fears. If we were to leave Iraq, there is little or no reason to suppose that al Qaeda would triumph in that country, and every reason to suppose the population which is hostile to al Qaeda would become even more hostile and resist any attempt to assert authority violently and with overwhelming force.

Just as the Neocons’ planning and rationale for this war was founded on ignorance of the tribal and sectarian realities underlying the Bush administration’s scheme, so also is it’s continued justification based on ignorance.