That's right, you heard him straight. The admirably forthright General Dannatt, the head of UK armed forces, has dropped another mini bombshell. The significance of it is presumably in direct inverse proportion to the attention it is getting. Here are his relevant comments:

The militants (and I use the word deliberately because not all are insurgents, or terrorists, or criminals; they are a mixture of them all) are well armed – probably with outside help, and probably from Iran. By motivation, essentially, and with the exception of the Al Qaeda in Iraq element who have endeavoured to exploit the situation for their own ends, our opponents are Iraqi Nationalists, and are most concerned with their own needs – jobs, money, security – and the majority are not bad people.

This is a remarkable contrast with the prevalent Blair-Bush line of recent years, that we are ranged against towel-headed 'evil-doers,' 'Saddamites', 'deadenders' and, of course, foreign fighters. Instead, the General informs us that most of the resistance are simply nationalists concerned about their needs and, I think one can reasonably infer, the needs of their country.

A well armed militant force, the majority of whom are not bad people. If one puts that together with the statistical evidence, that the majority (68%) of attacks are still directed against the occupation and that the resistance has the strong support of the Iraqi people, you have the reality of the 'insurgency' in Iraq. Not Islamofascists committed to the destruction of our way of life but an authentic, nationalist resistance, focused on expelling the occupiers and protecting their way of life from our imperialism.

And that's the opinion of the head of our armed forces.

This article is brought to you by Many Angry Gerbils. For the full article, including video and links, please click on the website link.