al- Qaida in Iraq leaders fear movement crumbling, despair and defection

It's over for them and they know it.

BAGHDAD (AP) - A diary and another document seized during U.S. raids show some al- Qaida in Iraq leaders fear the terror group is crumbling, with many fighters defecting to American-backed neighborhood groups, the U.S. military said Sunday.
The military revealed two documents discovered by American troops in November: a 39-page memo written by a mid- to high-level al-Qaida official with knowledge of the group's operations in Iraq's western Anbar province, and a 16-page diary written by another group leader north of Baghdad.

In the Anbar document, the author describes an al-Qaida in crisis, with citizens growing weary of militants' presence and foreign fighters too eager to participate in suicide missions rather than continuing to fight, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman.

"We lost cities and afterward, villages ... We find ourselves in a wasteland desert," Smith quoted the document as saying.