I mentioned here - along with others - that the assasination of Risha while tragic might just be the turning point of the war.

“Some 1,500 mourners called for revenge Friday as they buried the leader of the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida, who was assassinated by a bomb after meeting with President Bush earlier this month.

An al-Qaida front in Iraq claimed responsibility for the blast that killed Adbul-Sattar Abu Risha, 37, and three companions. A statement posted on the Internet by the Islamic State of Iraq called Abu Risha “one of the dogs of Bush” and described Thursday’s killing as a “heroic operation that took over a month to prepare.”

The statement could not be independently verified, but it appeared on Web sites commonly used by the insurgents. Al-Qaida earlier killed four of Abu Risha’s brothers and six other relatives for working with the U.S. military.

In Diyala province, meanwhile, a bomb exploded near a U.S. military vehicle on Friday, killing four American soldiers, the U.S. command said. They were the first American deaths reported in Iraq since Monday.

Many al-Qaida fighters were believed to have shifted to Diyala after Abu Risha’s tribal fighters helped drive them out of their sanctuaries in Anbar province.

Scores of Iraqi police and U.S. military vehicles lined the route to protect the funeral procession as it followed the black SUV carrying the Iraqi-flag-draped coffin of Abu Risha to the family cemetery just west of Ramadi, Anbar’s capital.

“We will take our revenge,” the mourners chanted. “We will continue the march of Abu Risha.”

In Vietnam we attempted to “win the hearts and minds” of the people of South Vietnam to which we did to a certain extent but not to the extent necessary. Allen Weinstein the Archivist of the United States once said of the American Revolution.

“Our founding father John Adams once was asked after the American Revolution, who supported it and who didn’t? He said about a third of the population supported it. About a third opposed it and about a third were waiting to see who won. I think that is a kind of emblematic statement on the Arab populations of the countries that we are concerned about. And they’re waiting to see who wins. If we project a sense of confidence, a sense of winning, using all of our resources, including our private resources, which haven’t begun to be tapped yet in the information war then I think we’ll do better.”

Total support from the Iraqi people is something that we’ve had in spurts - the elections being one example. Quite frankly it’s hard to do under such circumstance which have evolved in Iraq through the insurgency. Between the battle between the US and Al Qaeda Iraqis by in large have from the beginning looking to see “who wins”.

However history tells us that it’s movements based on a martyr that have fostered the greater change. Risha challenged Al Qaeda and lost, but in his loss the Iraqi’s may yet see their greatest gain.

Time will tell.