Washington – Many attacks against U.S. and other forces in Iraq are carried out by people whom insurgent leaders pay $150 for setting a bomb and more for other types of assaults, a top American general said today.
Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq, said the insurgency is neither growing nor shrinking despite U.S. efforts to combat it. He also expressed hope that a functioning Iraqi political system would lead to a reduction in violence and allow significant numbers of American troops to come home next year.
Someone setting a single remote-control bomb or mine often earns at least $150, Vines said in a teleconference from Iraq with reporters at the Pentagon, citing interviews with captured insurgents. He said other attackers can be paid hundreds of dollars more, even indicating that suicide bombers may be paid.
“I mean, how much do you pay someone who’s going to murder some other people when they kill themselves?” he said.
Vines described the insurgency as fractured by motivation. A group of non-Iraqis led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has declared allegiance to al-Qaida, is behind many of the spectacular bombings on civilian targets. Some Iraqis also follow a Sunni Islamic extremist ideology, he said.
Another group, which Vines numbered as a “few thousand,” are supporters of the regime of President Saddam Hussein. Still others are Iraqi nationalists opposed to any foreign presence on Iraqi soil.
