Flypaper and breeding grounds

Meanwhile, with U.S. attention focused elsewhere, the War on Terra isn't quite going as planned:

Abu Musab Zarqawi's foreign-led Al Qaeda in Iraq took open control of a key western town at the Syrian border, deploying its guerrilla fighters in the streets and flying Zarqawi's black banner from rooftops, witnesses, residents and others in the city and surrounding villages said...

Zarqawi's fighters were killing officials and civilians seen as government-allied or anti-Islamic, witnesses, residents and others said. On Sunday, the bullet-riddled body of a woman lay in a street of Qaim. A sign left on her corpse declared, "A prostitute who was punished."

But surely that'll only turn the locals against Al Qaeda and concurrently make them trust their occupiers, right? Not exactly:

Karim Hammad Karbouli, a 46-year-old resident still in Qaim, said he was waiting only for his brother to come with a pickup truck so Karbouli could load up his household and leave. Karbouli feared both Zarqawi's fighters and U.S. bombs, he said.

So not only is Al Qaeda now establishing strongholds in Iraq, but the local citizens don't see any difference between them and the supposed liberators. In other words, the battle for hearts and minds is even more of a failure than the battle for territory.