Osama bin Laden apparently has a different take on the global war on terror than many in Congress. While we have heard arguments about how Iraq provided nothing more than a diversion, the gaining strength of the new representative Iraqi government has convinced Osama of the critical need to stop it. In his Internet address to the faithful jihadis, Osama urges them to put all of their efforts to pull down the new democracy in Southwest Asia lest his entire life's work collapse:

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden urged Iraqi militants in an Internet message Saturday to continue fighting the U.S.-led coalition in Baghdad, or else "all the capitals in the region will fall to the crusaders." ...

The message urged militants in Iraq to continue their fight.

"Stay steadfast and don't leave Baghdad, otherwise all the capitals in the region will fall to the crusaders," said the message.

"Your Muslim nation is looking for you and praying for your victory. You are their hope after God. You are God's trusted soldiers who will liberate the ummah (the nation) from the serfdom of the crusaders in our countries," bin Laden said in the posting.

Osama also endorsed the selection of Abu Hamza al-Muhajer as the replacement target for Iraqi and American forces in Iraq now that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi continues in his long struggle to remain dead. His exhortation to Islamic lunatics everywhere reveals the desperation of his enterprise. Not only has the new democracy shown that Muslims can rule themselves without a strongman, it also appears to have built enough domestic support to resist the brutal charms of radical Islam. The Iraqis have shown their belief in liberty by voting in the millions on three separate occasions, walking for miles while the terrorists and insurgents have done their best to frighten them into obedience to Osama's oppressive vision.

The center of the Islamist project has definitely become Baghdad, and they are losing ... badly. Osama knows it, the foreign terrorists in Iraq know it, the native insurgents welcome it, and the Iraqis increasingly drive that point home on their own. In his last moments on that stretcher, Zarqawi knew it, too. Mujaher knows it, and Osama has given him the impossible task of attempting to terrorize the Iraqis into submission. Saddam managed it only by seizing control of the government and military. Mujaher will not get any chance at all at that path to power, not while the newly-freed Iraqis have anything to say about it.

Osama also praised the installation of the Islamist regime in Somalia, reminding everyone that our retreat from there in late 1993 showed us to have no tenacity in fighting Islamofascism. Even Osama can't pretend that the situation hasn't changed in the thirteen years since that ignominious "redeployment", the one John Murtha hails as a military victory. The only people still able to pretend that 1993 still exists is a rapidly diminishing group of Democratic politicians led by Murtha, John Kerry, and Russ Feingold.

Baghdad is the crucible for the Islamists and for the West. A victory for one will cripple the other. Osama sees which way this battle is going and has fewer and fewer nutcases willing to die for a lost cause there.

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The easiest way to understand why we are in Iraq is to ask yourself, why are the radical Islamic terrorists, especially al-Qaida, fighting us, there? The answer is that Iraq is absolutely crucial to their long-term strategic objectives. If Iraq [Read More]

Tracked on July 2, 2006 11:12 AM