IRAQIS AND AMERICANS ON ONE SIDE, TERRORISTS AND JOURNALISTS ON THE OTHER

Al Qaeda has claimed credit for a large, sophisticated attack Monday on the two hotels in Baghdad where most foreign journalists and many defense contractors stay.

The attack failed, but it was a near run thing.

The Palestine and Sheraton hotels are across a short street from each other, adjacent to Firdous Square, a traffic roundabout where the statue of Saddam Hussein was torn down on April 9th, 2003. The attack involved three suicide bombers and an unknown number of other fighters. The attack took place at dusk, over a span of four minutes.

Several news organizations were tipped off in advance, and cameras were rolling. And we wonder which side the media is on?

At 5:21 p.m., the first suicide car stopped at the concrete barrier separating the side street on which the hotels are located from Firdous Square, and blew up, opening a hole for the others to follow. Two minutes later, the second suicide car was engaged by Iraqi security forces and blew up, relatively harmlessly, on the far side of Firdous Square.

A minute after that, a cement truck drove through the hole the first suicide bomber had created into the side street between the hotels. But its wheels became entangled in concertina wire, and the driver was shot by a U.S. soldier inside the compound. At 5:25 p.m., the truck exploded, breaking windows in and causing damage to the front of the Palestine hotel, but no injuries to people inside the hotel were reported.

It would have been "catastrophic" if the cement truck had reached the Palestine hotel, said LtCol. Gary Luck, the security commander for the area. Twenty people — all of them Iraqis and most of them bystanders – were killed in the attack, and another 40 injured.

Mouwafak al Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, said the purpose of the attack was to take over the hotel and seize journalists as hostages. If so, many American soldiers might have regarded this as an incidence of "red on red" violence.

The view of many that the news media are the insurgents’ allies was reinforced by a Reuters story Tuesday which equated the suicide attack to the incident in April, 2003, when a U.S. tank fired on the Palestine hotel, killing two journalists.

(The hotel had not yet been taken by U.S. forces, who were fighting Saddam’s men in the streets. The journalists were on a balcony. One was pointing a camera at the tank. At a distance, a television camera looks a great deal like a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.)

"Major E," an Army officer stationed in Baghdad, described the October 24 assault as a public relations success, but a military failure, in an email to the Web log Power Line.

"The media sources I have seen breathlessly point out the spectacular nature f the attack and show the video clip over and over," Major E said. "They do not seem, however, to be pointing out that the Iraqi police were instrumental in repelling the assault…

“The real story here is that the Islamic terrorists in Iraq are incapable of even seizing, let alone holding, a hotel full of journalists. Meanwhile, the Iraqi security forces continue to get stronger and more capable by the day."

Within Iraq, the Palestine hotel attack has added to Al Qaeda’s image woes with Sunni Muslims, said the Web log StrategyPage.

"The terrorists are seen as an insensitive (all those dead Moslem civilians) and inept (all those failed attacks) bunch of fanatics," StrategyPage said.

In a remarkable story Thursday, the Guardian, a left-leaning British newspaper, reported on how Abu Theeb, an Iraqi insurgent leader, and his men protected the polling place in their village north of Baghdad from Al Qaeda during the constitutional referendum.

Initially attracted to the foreigners because they were flush with cash, Abu Theeb turned against Al Qaeda when they started targeting Iraqi police and Shi’ia civilians. His men drove Al Qaeda out of his village.

Now Abu Theeb is thinking of giving up armed resistance for politics. "It’s a new jihad," he told the Guardian. "There is a time for fighting and a time for politics."

Many other Sunnis have come to the same conclusion. Turnout was high (63 percent) in the constitutional referendum, and though most Sunnis voted against it, the constitution was easily approved, 78 percent to 22 percent.

"Things are much better in Iraq than the media would like you to believe," observes Major E .