Not content with losing the logistics war, now al Qaeda is just plain losing the war. And this is a new wrinkle:

BAGHDAD (AP) — Former Sunni insurgents asked the U.S. to stay away, then ambushed members of al-Qaida in Iraq, killing 18 in a battle that raged for hours north of Baghdad, an ex-insurgent leader and Iraqi police said Saturday.

The Islamic Army in Iraq sent advance word to Iraqi police requesting that U.S. helicopters keep out of the area since its fighters had no uniforms and were indistinguishable from al-Qaida, according to the police and a top Islamic Army leader known as Abu Ibrahim.

Abu Ibrahim told The Associated Press that his fighters killed 18 al-Qaida militants and captured 16 in the fight southeast of Samarra, a mostly Sunni city about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

“We found out that al-Qaida intended to attack us, so we ambushed them at 3 p.m. on Friday,” Abu Ibrahim said. He would not say whether any Islamic Army members were killed.

Much of the Islamic Army in Iraq, a major Sunni Arab insurgent group that includes former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, has joined the U.S.-led fight against al-Qaida in Iraq along with Sunni tribesmen and other former insurgents repelled by the terror group’s brutality and extremism.

Those who’ve cared to know learned months ago that the vast majority of Sunnis in Iraq have turned against al Qaeda, though Sunni Baathist “dead enders” and anti-Shia insurgents had mostly allied themselves with al Qaeda to fight US forces not long after the Coalition’s invasion in the spring of 2003. Before the middle of 2005, the first cracks in the Sunni’s affiliation, and sometime alliance, with al Qaeda had started to appear. Not many months after that, there was occasional combat between some AQI formations and Sunni militias.

Understand that the Islamic Army in Iraq is not pro-American. It was the largest Sunni anti-coalition insurgent group in Iraq after Saddam’s fall, and was devoted mainly to regaining power for the Baathists. Despite its name, the IAI is not especially hardline Muslim in character and would be mischaracterized as Islamist, though it did openly ally itself with al Qaeda in Iraq for a long time. But AQI’s harsh brutality in taking over Sunni towns, executing townspeople (and even beheading children) who wouldn’t toe the hardcore Islamist line, finally turned IAI against AQI early this year, and it began fighting AQI. However, AQI and IAI soon came to a ceasefire agreement under the proposition that they each alike were bound first to fight the Americans. Even so, IAI never signed on to AQI’s version of Islam and never agreed to help al Qaeda in its goal of instituting the Islamic State of Iraq.

Evidently, the ceasefire has broken down. At this stage of the war, for al Qaeda to lose 18 fighters to death with almost as many captured is a serious loss for them.

The Islamic Army in Iraq cannot be counted as friendly to the US or to Iraq’s central government. However, it now appears that they are no longer enemies, either.

There’s bad news for AQI elsewhere, too.

Meanwhile, farther east, in Diyala province, members of another former insurgent group, the 1920s Revolution Brigades, launched a military-style operation Saturday against al-Qaida in Iraq there, the Iraqi Army said.

About 60 militants were captured and handed over to Iraqi soldiers, an Army officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak to media.

Afterward, hundreds of people paraded through the streets of Buhriz, about 35 miles north of Baghdad, witnesses said. Many danced and fired their guns into the air, shouting “Down with al-Qaida!” and “Diyala is for all Iraqis!”

Well, when it rains, it pours.

When you’ve lost the logistics war, you’ve simply lost the war.

November 9, 2007: The various terrorist groups in Iraq, especially the Sunni Arabs and al Qaeda, appear to be having supply problems. In a word, the enemy is running out of ammunition. Their logistical “tail” is being chopped to bits. Captured documents and prisoner interrogations mention these shortages. There are other signs as well. Many of the bomb factories, or bomb storage sites, are full of homemade explosives. Apparently most of the Saddam era, ready-made stuff, is gone. Most of the pre-2003 military explosives have been found and destroyed by American combat engineers over the last four years.

In every operations planning meeting I attended or presented, discussion of logistics occupied easily two-thirds of the time, and usually about three-fourths. Correct tactics, after all, is simply using firepower and maneuver in order to achieve an advantage that is logistically supportable.

The more desperate al Qaeda in Iraq becomes to sustain itself, the more visible it will become. And the more visible it becomes, the more of them Iraqi and American forces will kill or capture.

The news today is that Israel fired missiles into Gaza to kill Mubarak al-Hassanat, a top-ranking Hamas member directly involved with firing Hamas’ homemade Kassan rockets into southern Israel. Hamas has been firing the anti-personnel rockets into Israeli towns and countryside with regularity for years. I went to Israel on Oct. 15 and returned just tonight. Two days ago I visited the town of Sederot (sometimes spelled Sderot) and nearby Ashkelon. Sederot is a little more than a kilometer from Gaza:

That’s me standing on the southern edge of Sederot. Gaza is only a few hundred meters on the other side of the tree line behind me. Six rockets fell on Sederot a few hours before we arrived. Here are the remains of three of them.

There is a large rack of exploded rockets outside the town’s police station. They have a diagram explaining how the rockets are made.

These are purely anti-personnel rockets. They lack the explosive power to penetrate reinforced buildings. The warhead section is loaded with pellets or small ball bearings intended to do nothing but shred flesh, propelled by only a couple of pounds of high explosive. However, if they do hit an ordinary building (as a rocket did this week) they can damage it substantially:

Israel has tethered three blimps around the northern perimeter of Gaza with automated warning sensors and systems.

The town official who showed us around said it is optically based. When a launch is detected, every warning speaker in the town - there are a lot of warning speakers - announces “red dawn” over and over. Townspeople have only 20 seconds to seek shelter before the rockets hit. The town continues to build shelters such as this one:

On Oct. 22, I took a video of the rack of recovered detonated rockets. This rack shows only six months worth of rockets launched. People in Sederot and surrounding areas have died from these attacks, including children. While “only” six rockets fell the day I was there, 20 were launched against Israeli civilians on Oct. 23, and six more the day after that.

In light of the recent rounds of rocket attacks, Israel is considering sanctions against Gaza in addition to selectively targeting Hamas officials responsible for the attacks.

A committee headed by Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai has recommended that electricity supplied by Israel be cut off to northern Gaza during certain evening and nighttime hours. The city of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, and environs, comprise the area from which most of the Kassam rockets are fired. The committee also recommends cutting down Israel’s supply of fuel and goods to Gaza.

“We have no alternative other than to employ these measures,” Deputy Minister Vilnai explained Thursday on Army Radio. “The situation cannot continue in which we supply the Palestinians with all their needs as usual while they fire at us. Gaza is a hostile entity, and this is a gradual disengagement.”

Some 62.5 percent of Gaza’s electricity, and all of Gaza’s fuel, including diesel, gasoline and natural gas, comes from Israel. Another 28.6 percent of Gaza’s electricity comes from Gaza’s power plant, which depends on Israeli fuel.

Before this latest round of rocket attacks, Israeli officials told my group that since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza last year, all humanitarian supplies provided to the Gazans have been provided by Israel, except four truckloads that came from Jordan.

Hamas, of course, has explicitly stated that its goal is the destruction of the state of Israel. After the disengagement from Gaza by Israel, the Gazans elected Hamas to rule them. This was less a vote for Hamas than and electoral rebellion against the Palestinian Authority, whose corruption under Yasser Arafat was so complete that after Arafat died, his successors in the PA were forced to campaign against his legacy as much as against Hamas. Fighting broke out between Hamas and the PA, which the PA lost. There is now no PA component to Gaza’s political life.

My group - nine other Methodist ministers, plus one Catholic nun and a Presbyterian pastor - also spent some time inside Palestinian-controlled territories in the West Bank talking to Palestinian figures. More to come. (Linked at OTB’s Traffic Jam.)

One hundred thirty Muslim scholars have sent a letter to Pope Benedict and other Christian religious leaders calling for competition between Islam and Christianity ” ‘only in righteousness and good works.’ “

“If Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the world cannot be at peace. With the terrible weaponry of the modern world; with Muslims and Christians intertwined everywhere as never before, no side can unilaterally win a conflict between more than half of the world’s inhabitants,” the scholars wrote. …

Using quotations from the Bible and the Koran to support their message, the scholars told people who relished conflict and destruction that “our very eternal souls are” at stake “if we fail to sincerely make every effort to make peace and come together in harmony.”

So let our differences not cause hatred and strife between us. Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works.”

The letter was signed by Muslim scholars from around the world, including the Algerian religious affairs minister, Bouabdellah Ghlamallah, and the grand mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa.

These are very fine sentiments and the letter should be warmly received by the Pope and the other Christian leaders. Let me propose, however, that sentiments (by either faith) will not do the job. Both sides much adopt and teach true “think and let think” habits among their faithful. This will be much more difficult for Muslims than Christians. Freedom of personal conscience and personal religion will have to be adopted by Muslim societies before the sentiments expressed by the scholars can become reality.

Example: while the scholars were writing their letter, the secretary-general of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America (AMJA), Dr. Sheikh Salah Al-Sawy, issued a fatwa declaring “that marriage between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man is forbidden and invalid, and that children born of such a union are illegitimate.” The fatwa says, among other things,

“A person must have some buffer between him and [deeds] that will bring him to perdition. A person about to commit suicide may expect society to intervene in order to safeguard his right to live. This is why shari’a prohibits marriage between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man - because it is the first step towards religious suicide, whether [it is the woman’s] suicide or that of the children she will bear. This [form of] suicide is much worse than actual suicide, which also [involves] the murder of [unborn children]. The woman can expect Muslim society to stand between her and this fate, thereby safeguarding her faith and her salvation in the world to come.”

Not that at least some Christians don’t need to look in the mirror when it comes to intolerance:

Slash-and-burn columnist Ann Coulter shocked a cable TV talk-show audience Monday when she declared that Jews need to be “perfected” by becoming Christians, and that America would be better off if everyone were Christian.

Coulter made the remarkable statements during an often heated appearance to promote her new book on advertising guru Donny Deutsch’s CNBC show “The Big Idea.”

In response to a question from Deutsch asking Coulter if “it would be better if we were all Christian,” the controversial columnist responded: “Yes.”

“We should all be Christian?” Deutsch repeated.

“Yes,” Coulter responded, asking Deutsch, who is Jewish, if he would like to “come to church with me.”

Deutsch, pressing Coulter further, asked, “We should just throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians?” She responded: “Yeah.”

Coulter deflected Deutsch’s assertion that her comments were anti-Semitic, matter-of-factly telling the show’s obviously upset host, “That is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews.”

A transcript of their conversation about Jews appears at the link. It must be read to believed. Ann Coulter is probably the most religiously uninformed public figure I have ever heard of. I do not consider myself a “perfected Jew” as a Christian, nor can I help but gagging at the idea Ann expressed (see transcript) that Christianity is the “Federal Express” way to heaven compared to Judaism. Before Ann or any other Christian starts talking about “perfecting Jews” they need to pay attention to perfecting Christians, for which there is very way long to go.

Foxnews.com has more about the scholars’ letter.

Three Muslim would-be terrorists, trained in Pakistan’s death (to others) camps, have been arrested by German authorities for plotting to attack Ramstein Air Base and Frankfurt International Airport with explosives.

Bombs more powerful than Madrid, London: “Monika Harms, the German federal prosecutor, said the three had trained at camps in Pakistan and obtained some 680kg (1,500lb) of hydrogen peroxide for making explosives.

‘This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings,’ Joerg Ziercke, the head of Germany’s federal crime office, said at a joint news conference with Ms Harms.” (Guardian)

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a bleaching agent with common household uses. I’ve used it as a wound disinfectant and it’s particualrly effective at removing blood stains, though it tends to remove fabric color as well as the blood.

The the stuff you buy in a drug store is only about three percent strength, far too weak to use as an explosive. In more concentrated forms it can be used alone as a rocket fuel or as a rocket fuel component. The famed Bell Rocket Belt, for example, used H2O2 as a monofuel. H2O2 is still used for thrusters in spacecraft.

Used alone, H2O2 needs a catalyst to ignite. But it can be combined with acetone to produce a highly volatile liquid explosive. Acetone is also a commonly available household chemical, used in nail polish for example. Larger and purer quantities are commercially obtainable without much difficulty. Acetone plus H2O2 is called triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, an explosive. It is very easy to ignite (hence dangerous to handle). But obtaining H2O2 in the high concentration required to make a powerful TATP bomb is not easy; even chemical-supply companies rarely offer H2O2 in greater concentration than 30-35 percent, and for a big bang from TATP, 70 percent or higher is needed.

Thirty-percent H2O2 can be distilled into higher concentrations. Since the three men were arrested with 1,500 pounds of the stuff, I’m guessing that is what they wanted to do. That amount would distill down to about 650 pounds of 70-percent strength stuff. CNN reported that German sources said the bomb attack, just days from being carried out, would have produced an explosion equivalent to more than half a ton of TNT.

Der Spiegel reports that the three men had legally obtained 730 kilograms (>1,600 pounds) of chemicals, which raised the attention level of the authorities.

A few days ago, police experts secretly swapped the 35-percent solution of hydrogen peroxide contained in 12 barrels for a diluted liquid that only contained 3 percent of the chemical. …

[T]he men had all the necessary components ready — they had even already procured a military ignition mechanism for the explosive device. “An attack was imminent — it was only a question of time,” said one high-ranking security expert. Probably the men wanted to place the bombs in one or more cars and explode them in front of the target.

TATP was said by British authorities to have been used in the London bus bombings and apparently is favored by such attackers because it is free of nitrogen, a common component of explosives. TATP is thus undetectable by nitrogenous-compound sniffing scanners.

Even had an actual high-explosive bomb not been intended, a weaker form of TATP could cause considerable damage if used as an arson agent. It burns very hot and will burn right through aluminum. This was apparently the plan of the 2006 al Qaeda scheme to down 10 airliners over the mid-Atlantic in one day.

Though the planned attacks were intended to take place on airports, authorities said that the actual targets were not aviation facilities or aircraft, but against crowded facilities such as restaurants, bars or clubs at or near the airports. If so, then the 35-percent solution of H2O2 probably would have been sufficient to make a potent flame weapon, basically a low-order explosive (with luck) that spread burning TATP through the targets.

Der Spiegel says that this barely-thwarted attack is a wakeup call for Germany that it is definitely a target of Islamist terrorists. This may be difficult for the German people to accept, since they consider themselves as having good relations with the Middle East. That doesn’t matter to Islamists, of course, who mainly despise the Arab governments with whom Germany gets along so well. The Germans are learning what I’ve said before - you may not be interested in terrorists, but terrorists are definitely interested in you.