Al-Qaeda in Iraq: Determined but Desperate, by Omar Fadhil

The latest three messages from al-Qaeda addressing the Sunni community uncover the depth of the crisis that al-Qaeda is facing in its former host community.

The threatening tone of the missives from the alleged Abu Omar Baghdadi and Aby Ayyub, and the insulting tone of the second by Zawahiri, reflect mistrust, anxiety and a dire need to retrieve what was lost.

Death threats do not represent a serious call for cooperation on an achievable objective. This “work-for-me-or-I-kill-you” tone is completely different from the usual recruiting slogans that have focused on the ideology of fighting for absolute truth against absolute evil.

Those slogans have failed, which is why they have been discarded and replaced by threats and an effort to seek out third parties to render verdicts on disagreements, which is what Baghdadi alluded to when he proposed that some (not all!) Sunni clerics come forward to mediate between al-Qaeda and the public.

This call for mediation indicates first, that al-Qaeda has lost direct contact with the public and second, that there are still some clerics involved with al-Qaeda.

the rest at, Pajamas Media

Iraq Journal: The Liberation of Karmah, Part II

The small city of Karmah sits between Fallujah and Baghdad, two Iraqi cities that have suffered more insurgent and terrorist violence than most. Karmah, however, was more hard-hit than either. It’s right on the bleeding edge of Anbar Province where the outskirts of Baghdad taper away. Unlike Fallujah, it has no hard perimeter to defend, nor was it considered a top priority for counterinsurgency operations. Surge forces in Baghdad drove Al Qaeda in Iraq members out of the capital’s neighborhoods and straight into Karmah during most of 2007.

Al Qaeda in Iraq did in Karmah what they have done everywhere else – intimidated and murdered civilians into submission. They decapitated police officers and placed severed heads all over the city. They destroyed the homes of anyone who opposed them. The message was clear: This is what will happen to you if you work with the Americans.

Great Read!

Michael J. Totten reporting for Fox News

Breaking News >> British Defense Secretary Postpones Plans to Withdraw 1,500 Troops From Iraq

From Fox News

More on Saddam and the Terrorists. LIES all lies, just ask any indoctrinated (by their own choice) Leftist. Should any want to dirty their eyeballs and then have to wash, rinse and dry your computer/laptop, just visit The Daily InterKos. OH and to be fair, some conspiratorial extreme right wing nut houses.

The Washington Times reports on the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) paper on Saddam Hussein’s connections with terrorist groups, which we’ve already commented on a number of times. The IDA report concludes that “Iraq was a long-standing supporter of international terrorism”:

“Many terrorist movements and Saddam found a common enemy in the United States,” said the report. “State sponsorship of terrorism became such a routine tool of state power that Iraq developed elaborate bureaucratic processes to monitor progress and accountability.”

Zawahiri’s Islamic Jihad group, which merged into al Qaeda with Zawahiri as al Qaeda’s number two leader, worked closely with Iraqi intelligence and received Iraqi help in organizing terrorist attacks. So the IDA report, which is based on a review of only a fraction of the Iraqi intelligence documents that are now available, confirms the threat to the U.S. and its allies that was posed by cooperation between Saddam’s regime and Islamic terrorist groups. It’s hard not to agree with Rep. Pete Hoekstra:

Mr. Hoekstra bemoaned the White House’s refusal to highlight the Islamic Jihad-Saddam connection, or, for that matter, recent disclosures that Saddam told his FBI interrogator that he planned to resume production of weapons of mass destruction.”It just points out from my standpoint how pathetic this administration has been in really talking to the American people about the threat from radical jihadists in general and what was going on in Iraq in particular,” he said.

White House spokesmen did not return calls seeking comment on the IDA report.

SCOTT adds: Tom Joscelyn writes to comment:

Unfortunately, I think this Washington Times account shows how much confusion there still is regarding al Qaeda. There is a subheading in the article that reads “Al Qaeda out” and the article goes on to explain that the IPP study found no “no direct operational link” between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda. That’s true, the report does have one throw away line in the executive summary that says that. But it is also highly misleading and based on a false premise. Then, under another subheading that reads “Egypt jihad in,” the article explains how the IPP study found that Saddam’s regime had an “an alliance with Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ)” dating to the early 1990’s. The second point is true, and it also directly contradicts the first.

Here is where the confusion comes in. The EIJ, as anyone who has studied al Qaeda knows, is as much “al Qaeda” as Osama bin Laden himself ever was. A number of accounts have pointed out that the EIJ merged with al Qaeda in 1998 (or not fully until 2001, depending on who you talk to). The implication being that the EIJ wasn’t really “al Qaeda” until that time. This is nonsense for a lot of reasons.

The EIJ and its leader, Ayman al Zawahiri, who is al Qaeda’s #2, have worked closely with bin Laden since the mid-1980’s. There is ample evidence of this close working relationship from then on. Montasser al-Zayyat, an Islamist attorney in Egypt who represented Zawahiri’s terrorist colleagues in court, has explained this in his book The Road to al-Qaeda. Zayyat writes: “Zawahiri managed to introduce drastic changes to Osama bin Laden’s philiosophy after they first met in Afghanistan in the middle of 1986, mainly because of the friendship that developed between them. Zawahiri convinced bin Laden of his jihadi approach, turning him from a funamentalist preacher whose main concern was relief work, into a jihadi fighter, clashing with despots and American troops in the Arab world. Zawahiri gave bin Laden some of his closes confidants to help him. They [EIJ members] later became the main figures in bin Laden’s al-Qaeda.” Zayyat goes on to recount how the influence went both ways, but clearly Zawahiri was an important influence on bin Laden early on. There is much more, of course. Lawrence Wright documents the close dealings between the EIJ and bin Laden from the late 1980’s on in The Looming Tower. Regardless of when the EIJ “formally” merged with bin Laden, whether you want to claim it was 1998 or 2001 or whenever, the two were working hand-in-glove long before – since the mid to late 1980’s. They cooperated on attacks, in al Qaeda’s founding in the late 1980’s, shared the same financing and training infrastructure, etc. Bin Laden even put the EIJ’s members on his payroll in the late 1980’s.

The point is that it takes a special brand of myopia to claim that a significant relationship between Saddam’s regime and the EIJ does not somehow represent a “direct connection” to al Qaeda. Zawahiri and the EIJ are as much ‘al Qaeda’ as bin Laden ever was.

And now, thanks to the recently released Iraqi Intelligence documents, we know that Saddam had a working relationship with the EIJ going back to at least 1990.

Power Line

2008: Year of the Moonbat?

South Australian Premier Mike Rann has called for David Hicks to apologize for his Taliban training and terrorist sympathies. In response, here are some words of wisdom from a commenter at abc.net

Hicks never trained with al-Qaeda, there was no al-Qaeda until 9/11.The term al-Qaeda was thought up by the CIA, who has subsequently admitted doing so. The falsehood was started in January 2001 by Jamal al Fadl, a Sudanese who had been with Bin Laden in the early 1990s. Jamal al Fadl stole money from Bin Laden, and then sought protection in the USA. The FBI and CIA paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars to create the al-Qaeda fiction. In fact, al Fadl invented the name al-Qaeda.Osama Bin Laden never used the term al-Qaeda until after 9/11, when he realized that al-Qaeda was the term the Americans had invented for him.

This is all about oil, a consortium represented by George W Bush’s father met with the Taliban to discuss the construction of a pipeline through Afghanistan to convey oil from Azerbaijan to a port in Pakistan, where it was to be tankered directly to the US. This consortium’s proposal was rejected by the Taliban, who gave the rights to the pipeline to Brazil. Thus the Taliban became the world’s enemy #1 according to the US.

If the Taliban had agreed to Bush snr’s proposal Hicks would have been a friend of the US, not an enemy. The invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq would never have happened, and life as we know it would not have changed in any way.

Pakistan says al Qaeda behind Bhutto killing…Well come on AND???

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan has “intelligence intercepts” indicating that al Qaeda was behind the killing of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, the Interior Ministry said on Friday.

“We have intelligence intercepts indicating that al Qaeda leader Baitullah Mehsud is behind her assassination,” ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema told a news conference.

Mehsud is one of Pakistan’s most wanted militant leaders and is based in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border.

Reuters

LIKE, the Taliban AND the ISI??? Come clean…Wait, you CAN’T come clean. The blood on your hands will not wash off.