Rocket Blowback

This is just depressing:

A major Iraqi insurgent group claimed Friday to have successfully built and tested a rocket with a range of 20 kilometers (13 miles) and has named it after a 14-year-old Iraqi girl allegedly raped and killed by a U.S. soldier.

In video footage posted online, the Islamic Army in Iraq said the "Abeer" rocket carried a payload of 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of explosives — enough to level a house.

"We called it 'Abeer' to remind the Islamic nation of the wounds of our sister ... whose virginity was violated by the worshippers of the cross," the Islamic Army, said in a statement posted together with the footage. The video was viewed on a Web site frequently used by insurgent groups to issue statements and post film footage of attacks.

The rocket appears to be a simple copy of the the inaccurate, homemade Qassam rockets that the Palestinian group Hamas regularly lobs into Israel. However, the Islamic Army - one of the larger Sunni Arab insurgent factions which is believed to include former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, his intelligence service, and former army officers - has rebranded it in such a way that, every time one of these things detonates, it will become a reminder of one of the lowest points of a cack-handed occupation for the entire region.

It's depressing because it shows that, while the Bush administration are playing tiddliwinks, the insurgents are playing Fifth Generational (information and psychological) war like callous chess players. Not only will it remind everyone of the rape, but that reminder will help offset possible negative reaction even when one of these things is used to kill Moslem innocents.

These guys are, supposedly, the arse-end of Saddam's old cronies. Yet they appear to be out-thinking the best the Bush administration and the Pentagon have to offer in the "hearts and minds" and 5GW department. Where the hell are the experts who could work up strategies and tactics to do the same kind of thing and better back to them?