What the Terrorists Have in Mind: "an article in the most recent issue of Al Qaeda's Voice of Jihad - an online magazine that comes out every two weeks - makes the case that the United States has a greater strategic mess on its hands in Afghanistan and Iraq than the Soviet Union did in Afghanistan in the 1980's. As translated by the SITE Institute, a nonprofit group that monitors terrorists, the author describes how the United States has stumbled badly by getting itself mired in two guerrilla wars at once, and that United States forces are now 'merely trying to 'prove their presence' - for all practical purposes, they have left the war.'
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist now wreaking havoc in Iraq, sees things in a similar way. 'There is no doubt that the Americans' losses are very heavy because they are deployed across a wide area and among the people and because it is easy to procure weapons,' he wrote in a recent communiqu� to his followers that was posted on several radical Web sites. 'All of which makes them easy and mouthwatering targets for the believers.'
Clearly, the president's oft-repeated claim that American efforts are paying off because 'more than three-quarters of Al Qaeda's key members and associates have been killed, captured or detained' - a questionable claim in itself - means little to jihadists. What matters to them that the invasion of Iraq paved the way for the emergence of a movement of radical Sunni Iraqis who share much of the Qaeda ideology.
Among the recurrent motifs on the Web are that America has blundered in Iraq the same way the Soviet Union did in the 1980's in Afghanistan, and that it will soon be leaving in defeat. 'We believe these infidels have lost their minds,' was the analysis on a site called Jamaat "
- posted by geoff @ #