August 15th was one of the bloodiest days the country has seen in recent memory, but Joel Wing says the Western press has misinterpreated the attacks. Wing insists that "there is absolutely no connection between the day’s attacks and the American withdrawal":
There is violence today with U.S. troops in Iraq, and if they get an extension to stay as trainers there will be violence, and when they go there will still be violence. Every insurgent group wants the foreign forces out, but they also have problems with the Iraqi government, which means they will continue their resistance whether the U.S. is in the country or not. The other problem was that of the 26 attacks that occurred, the police blamed Al Qaeda for only one of them, and only one other was probably their work as well. The reporters seemed to forget that there are several other insurgent groups active in Iraq such as the Baathist Naqshibandi, Hamas al-Iraq, Jaish al-Islami, Ansaral-Sunna, and Jaish Muhammed. Al Qaeda in Iraq is also almost exclusively focused upon high-profile attacks that will gain as much media attention aspossible so that it can raise money. Very few of the attacks on August 16 met those criteria. Overall, the English language media placed their own concerns in their writing, ignoring Iraq’s.
The Dish 