The antiwar Left continues to lament the American involvement in Iraq and support the “morally acceptable” Iraqi “resistance” as a “legitimate expression of Iraqi self-determination”. In doing so, they knowingly align themselves with the forces of darkness. Ansar al-Sunnah, an Islamist Iraqi terrorist group that has pledged fealty to al Qaeda sanctions the operations of the most barbaric nature. Charles Johnson reports on a MEMRI TV translation of the Al-Iraqiya TV program that airs the confessions of captured terrorists. This particular terrorist cell whips, murders, dismembers and guts a captured policeman to rig him as a bomb:

Interviewer: To what group do you belong?
'Adnan Elias: The Ansar Al-Sunna, sir... We tied (the policeman) up and blindfolded him, and then threw him into the trunk. Then we went to the house of the Emir. We untied his hands and eyes, and then punished him.

Interviewer: How did you punish him?
'Adnan Elias: We whipped him.

Interviewer: You whipped him?
'Adnan Elias: Yes, Muhsin did.

Interviewer: And you?
'Adnan Elias: I didn't whip him. I just stood there holding the gun.

Interviewer: Go on.
'Adnan Elias: They told us to take him to the house of Habib 'Izzat Hamu. We took him out there. We said to him: "Why did you do this and that… Why are you after us?" He answered: "It's out of our hands. We get orders." Then we were told to bring a knife.

Interviewer: You slaughtered him?
'Adnan Elias: Yes, sir. Habib 'Izzat Hamu got the knife. He slaughtered him, and when he was dead, he opened his shirt buttons and cut open his stomach.

Interviewer: Who opened him up?
'Adnan Elias: Muhsin, sir.

Interviewer: When a doctor performs an operation he wears a surgeon's mask over his nose and mouth.
'Adnan Elias: No sir, he didn't wear one.

Interviewer: He didn't wear one?
'Adnan Elias: No sir, he didn't wear one. He cut open his stomach and took stuff out.

Interviewer: What did he take out?
'Adnan Elias: I don't know, his guts.

Interviewer: Weren't you nauseous? Didn't you vomit?
'Adnan Elias: You mean Muhsin?

Interviewer: No, you.
'Adnan Elias: I was standing a little bit aside.

Interviewer: And he didn't vomit or get nauseous?
'Adnan Elias: No, sir.

Interviewer: What is he, Dracula?
'Adnan Elias: Huh?

Interviewer: Go on.
'Adnan Elias: Yes, sir. He opened him up, took stuff out, and put TNT and explosives inside. Then he sewed up his stomach with thick thread.

Interviewer: With thread?
'Adnan Elias: Yes. And a needle. He put the buttons back in place...

Interviewer: He buttoned him up.

'Adnan Elias: Yes, he buttoned him up. We were told to take him in the car near the square in Tel A'far. We threw him there and placed his head back on his shoulders.

Interviewer: My God!
'Adnan Elias: 15 to 30 minutes later they told his family to come and get their son. His father came with two policemen. They picked up the body and made no more than two steps – we were standing far away – Ahmad Sinjar pressed the button.

Interviewer: By remote control.
'Adnan Elias: The body exploded on them, and they died.

Interviewer: So his father and the two policemen died.
'Adnan Elias: Yes sir, and we took off.

In Afghanistan, women are beaten, raped and murdered for working to better the lives of their fellow citizens:

"Authorities have found the bodies of three Afghan women, one of whom worked for an aid group, who were raped, strangled and dumped with a warning for women not to work for such groups...

" 'This is retribution for those women who are working in NGOs and those who are involved in whoredom'... The note was found attached to the chest of one of the dead women...

"The bodies were dumped near a road outside Pul-i-Khumri city, the provincial capital of Baghlan...

"One of the three was a 25 year-old woman who until recently worked for a Bangladeshi non-governmental organisation (NGO) involved in providing micro credit, mostly to widows.

"A group calling itself 'Afghan Youths Convention' claimed responsibility for the killing, according to a caller who telephoned a Reuters reporter in northern Afghanistan.

The popular meme among leftists and even some very rational terrorism analysts is the American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan fuels the hatred of the Islamists and drives Muslims to their ranks. This is nonsense. The depravity exists in these men’s hearts, and no amount of appeasement, coddling or rationalizations will drive them to act within the bounds of civilization. There is much room for debate on how the Muslim world must be engaged to create an atmosphere of tolerance, but there is no doubt that the animals of al Qaeda, Ansar al-Sunnah, the Taliban or the 'Afghan Youths Convention' must be hunted down.

This is exactly what we are doing in Iraq. Efforts to destroy the sinister forces of the Iraqi insurgency proceed. Outside al Qaim, US Marines engaged and killed 12 terrorists of Zarqawi’s al Qaeda in Iraq. Civilians continue to provide tips, the latest round led to the arrest of 5 terrorists and their bomb making materials, and exposed a large weapons cache. In Ramadi, the Marines repelled another car bomb attack on their base thanks to the heroism of PFC Bryan Nagel, who destroyed the VBIED (Suicide Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device) while under fire. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles continue to be employed to capture insurgents, and traditional foot patrols net 15 insurgents as well. UAV technology is expected to improve in the future with automated systems that can operate at lower altitudes, allowing for better real time intelligence.

There is hard and ugly work left to be done in this war. The perversions of al Qaeda and other Islamists cannot be defeated without removing the most dangerous members of these groups from society, as there is no reforming the likes of these morally depraved individuals. Iraq and Afghanistan are only the beginning of a long war that spans several continents. Al Qaeda and their Islamists allies count on American fecklessness and even the support of the domestic and international Left to weaken the resolve and destroy the will to fight. This, and not al Qaeda's military capacity or our ability to engage moderate Muslims in dialogue, is the greatest challenge to victory.