Fly paper theory gets sticky

I'm posting at Pennywit today. I think BatOne is mad at me, he's very cranky today and I don't think PW likes my post enough to promote it to his front page, so I'll cross post here. It's an important story.

The Boston Globe reports today on two new studies that reveal the vaunted "fly-paper theory" has morphed into a breeding program.

New investigations by the Saudi Arabian government and an Israeli think tank -- both of which painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States -- have found that the vast majority of these foreign fighters are not former terrorists and became radicalized by the war itself.

The studies, which together constitute the most detailed picture available of foreign fighters, cast serious doubt on President Bush's claim that those responsible for some of the worst violence are terrorists who seized on the opportunity to make Iraq the ''central front" in a battle against the United States.

Using interrogations of captured suspects and case studies of suicide bombers and foreign insurgents, researchers found, "the vast majority of [non-Iraqi] Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq."

Reuven Paz, author of the Israeli study said, ''I am not sure the American public is really aware of the enormous influence of the war in Iraq, not just on Islamists but the entire Arab world."

I never put much stock in that fly-paper theory anyway. Having used it myself on the farm, I can tell you it's messy. It's just as likely to stick to you as not and while it does accumulate a satisfying number of carcasses, it never catches all the flies.