This is what’s known as very good news, which is probably why it’s getting little attention. From Reuters:

FALLUJA/RAMADI Iraq, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein loyalists who violently opposed January elections have made an about-face as Thursday’s polls near, urging fellow Sunni Arabs to vote and warning al Qaeda militants not to attack.

In a move unthinkable in the bloody run-up to the last election, guerrillas in the western insurgent heartland of Anbar province say they are even prepared to protect voting stations from fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Graffiti calling for holy war is now hard to find.

Instead, election campaign posters dominate buildings in the rebel strongholds of Ramadi and nearby Falluja, where Sunnis staged a boycott or were too scared to vote last time around.

“We want to see a nationalist government that will have a balance of interests. So our Sunni brothers will be safe when they vote,” said Falluja resident Ali Mahmoud, a former army officer and rocket specialist under Saddam’s Baath party.

“Sunnis should vote to make political gains. We have sent leaflets telling al Qaeda that they will face us if they attack voters.”

And the real money quote is at the end:

“Zarqawi is an American, Israeli and Iranian agent who is trying to keep our country unstable so that the Sunnis will keep facing occupation,” said a Baathist insurgent leader who would give his name only as Abu Abdullah.

Well, of-course this guy Abu Abdullah is a little bit nuts … missing, as he does, Zarqawi’s number one allegiance: Halliburton.

Nevertheless, one has a difficult-to-suppress desire to clap him on the back. If Abu Musab is finding himself with a ton of former-friends-but-now-new-enemies in the Abu Abdullahs of Falluja, it bodes rather ill for the continued profitability of his line of work.

I guess good things were bound to follow shortly after Howard Dean’s “we can’t win this war” statement, but this is particularly prompt.

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