From the Telegraph:

Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, who goes by the nom de guerre Dr Fadl, helped bin Laden create al-Qaeda and then led an Islamist insurgency in Egypt in the 1990s.

But in a book written from inside an Egyptian prison, he has launched a frontal attack on al-Qaeda’s ideology and the personal failings of bin Laden and particularly his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Twenty years ago, Dr Fadl became al-Qaeda’s intellectual figurehead with a crucial book setting out the rationale for global jihad against the West.

Today, however, he believes the murder of innocent people is both contrary to Islam and a strategic error. "Every drop of blood that was shed or is being shed in Afghanistan and Iraq is the responsibility of bin Laden and Zawahiri and their followers," writes Dr Fadl.

The terrorist attacks on September 11 were both immoral and counterproductive, he writes. "Ramming America has become the shortest road to fame and leadership among the Arabs and Muslims. But what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy’s buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of yours?" asks Dr Fadl. "That, in short, is my evaluation of 9/11."

He is equally unsparing about Muslims who move to the West and then take up terrorism. "If they gave you permission to enter their homes and live with them, and if they gave you security for yourself and your money, and if they gave you the opportunity to work or study, or they granted you political asylum," writes Dr Fadl, then it is "not honourable" to "betray them, through killing and destruction".

 Feminists throughout the Western world are shocked at this report. Aren’t they? Funny that their outrage has been so quiet that we haven’t heard a peep from them.

From Jihad Watch:

She had them raped and then turned them into suicide bombers so they could escape the shame 

Mother of the Believers

Otherwise they would have been killed anyway – by stoning as adulterers – but this way, they were celebrated as heroes.

"Iraqi woman had 80 women raped then recruited as suicide bombers," from Agence France-Presse, February 4 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A WOMAN suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

Samira Jassam, 51, was arrested by Iraqi police and confessed to recruiting the women and orchestrating dozens of attacks.

In a video confession, she explained how she had mentally prepared the women for martyrdom operations, passed them on to terrorists who provided explosives, and then took the bombers to their targets.

"We arrested Samira Jassim, known as ‘Um al-Mumenin’, the mother of the believers, who was responsible for recruiting 80 women”, Major General Qassim Atta said….

 Victor Davis Hanson wrote in yesterday’s Investor’s Business Daily:

Once upon a time, Obama and his fans asserted that Iran was a hyped-up threat, that we could go openly into Pakistan if need be to beat al-Qaida, that the surge wouldn’t work, that the Patriot Act and the Guantanamo Bay prison have torn asunder the Constitution, that we have alienated our European allies, that defeating terrorists is more a matter for criminal justice than military force, and that pushing democracy on traditional Islamic societies is culturally chauvinistic and naive.

But like his predecessors, the Obama administration will quickly learn that present U.S. foreign policy is mostly a result of reasonable decisions taken amid bad and worse choices. Therefore, don’t be surprised if a President Obama continues much of what we are now doing — albeit with a kinder, gentler rhetoric of "multilateralism" and "U.N. accords."

Obama has not assumed office yet, and already Iran has mocked the president-elect’s campaign suggestions for unconditional diplomacy. Already, old-new Defense Secretary Robert Gates has indicated a desire to stabilize Iraq before withdrawing forces.

Already, commanders have told the president-elect that a simple surge of more troops into Afghanistan offers no magical solution. Already, we are learning that whether we try more aid or ultimatums, Pakistan will remain Pakistan — a radical Islamic, nuclear failed state that is deeply anti-American rather than merely anti-George Bush.

As Inauguration Day approaches and campaign rhetoric ends and governance begins, words begin to have consequences. Truth is, there are not many alternatives to the present strategy against Islamic terrorism.

Obama doesn’t want a terrorist attack after seven years of quiet — certainly not of the sort that occurred in Mumbai last month. He may tinker with, but not end, Homeland Security measures. He may better articulate the complexities of a tribal Middle East, but he won’t stop American efforts to foster democracy there.

A President Obama may show more anguish over the necessary use of violence, but I suspect he won’t cede a military victory to terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. He will talk up the Atlantic Alliance, but likely complain in private that the U.S. inordinately does the heavy lifting in NATO. And if terrorists dared again to kill hundreds of Americans here at home, our new president would probably take military action.

Most conservatives and moderates expected that candidate Obama’s grand campaign talk of novel choices abroad would end with President Obama’s realist admission of very few new options.

His problem is instead his left-wing base, which for some reason believed Obama’s electioneering bombast that he could magically make the world anew — and so now apparently should do just that or else!

We think this is a fair prediction. But it implies that Obama himself will make decisions. We doubt that he will. We doubt that he can. A man who voted neither yes nor no most of his time as a Senator is not likely to become suddenly decisive. He will float above the hurly-burly of decision-making for as long as he can. Eventually, however much it will pain him, he’ll have to take responsibility for the decisions made for him by others – such as Rahm Emanuel (if he survives the Blackguardovich scandals), and, in foreign affairs, the Clintons. 

 

 From an article in Front Page Magazine by Douglas Stone:

In retiring from Basra, the British Army essentially handed over the city to local Shi’ite militias and criminal gangs. When the Iraqi government decided early this year to take back the city with a joint Iraqi-American effort, the Brits remained at their airport base, where their role was largely that of spectators.

Beyond merely local failure in Iraq, the retreat from Basra and the gradual drawdown of British forces is important for what it says about the nation most Americans still regard as our most important ally: Whatever its glorious history – whether on land, on the sea, or in the air – British military capacity today is such a shadow of its former self as to be scarcely a factor on the international scene.

The reason is two-fold: the military’s lack of resources and the lack of will on the part of its civilian masters. Indeed, the lack of resources is a function of a degraded resolve among increasingly pacifist Britons, which prominently includes a substantial part of the ruling Labour Party but also important elements of the Conservative Party, not to mention large segments of the media and cultural elite.This reluctance to use force to defend national interests has been developing since World War II, and particularly since the beginning of Harold Wilson’s Labour government in 1964. It was only momentarily reversed during the Falklands War by the special nature of Mrs. Thatcher’s personality and politics, as she almost single-handedly willed the country to a successful outcome. But that was the exception that proves the rule. Parliament has refused for more than 40 years to spend what is necessary to have a military that is even close to being proportionately as strong as the United States, and the country lacks the spirit and resolve to make the sacrifices in blood and treasure necessary to take on a difficult fight.

The British retreat in Iraq was been made possible by Brown’s ascent as Prime Minister in 2007 and is a measure of both the strength and weakness of his position in British politics. As the leader of a new administration, he was more capable than Tony Blair to alter Britain’s commitment to an unpopular war. At the same time, he was more sensitive to a largely antiwar press and Labour Party as he consolidated his power, tried to establish a reputation, and worked through months of scandal and failure that compromised his authority. Brown has suggested that Britain’s work is done in Iraq. He and his flaccid Foreign Minister, David Miliband, are emphasizing the importance of the NATO effort in Afghanistan over the struggle in Iraq and offering soft soap and rationalization to cover its failure to withdraw pari passu with its American allies…

Among professional observers in the UK, the British military is widely considered to be overstretched, even with no more than 12,000 troops combined in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, it is often short of equipment; the equipment doesn’t work properly; or it is out of service. As the Brits might say, the proposition that Great Britain remains a serious military power has been tested to destruction… As events in Iraq have demonstrated, Britain’s has neither the will nor the way to make a substantial and sustained contribution to American efforts in any kind of serious military operation.

What they do have in abundance among the leftist elites is the gall to presume that Britain has some special right to offer guidance to the United States when its role in the world is dwarfed by our own …

Like the Grand Old Duke of York, the British marched up the hill in Iraq and marched back down again – all to little avail. But their failure in Iraq is no trifling story: it’s a brutally plain statement of Britain’s inability to commit resources and muster the political will necessary to engage in controversial and dangerous military operations.

The British bulldog is no more, its military scarcely rising to the ferocity of a lap dog. A hard saying, perhaps, but something we need to keep in mind in assessing the value of our British ally in potential future conflicts. And not least in understanding the implications of the so-called “Special Relationship.”

 Led by zombietime, we and many others declare today, Novemer 22, 2008, to be VI day – Victory in Iraq Day.

Read much more about it here.

Picture from Gathering of Eagles: NY

 

 

Iraq: Al-Qaeda ‘used 24 child suicide bombers in last two years

 

Baghdad, 1 Oct. (AKI) – Al-Qaeda has over the past two years used 24 children to carry out suicide bombings in Iraq, the director of military operations for the Interior Ministry, Abdelaziz Mohammed Jasim, told pan-Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat.

"Of the 24 children, five had a mental disability. From analysing the others’ remains, we established that they were homeless," said Jasim.

American soldiers stationed in Iraq have reported that the insurgency has armed children as young as 11 to fight against them.

Al-Qaeda is targeting orphans, street children and mentally disabled children as suicide bomber recruits as well as women, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry. 

There have been at least 16 suicide attacks carried out by women in recent months in the volatile Al-Qaeda stronghold of Diyala province, north of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

Iraqi children (photo) in general make up 20 percent of the civilian victims of bomb attacks in the country.

 A brave Iraqi could be sentenced to death for visiting Israel.

Al-Alusi said he went to Israel to seek international support for Iraq as it struggles against terrorism, and insisted that the outcry reflects Iranian meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs — an accusation often leveled by Sunnis like himself against Iraq’s mostly Shiite neighbor.

"Iran is behind Hamas and Hezbollah and many other terrorist organizations. Israelis are suffering like me, like my people. So we need to be together," he said. "Peace will have more of a chance."

Read the whole story here.

 Amir Taheri writes in the New York Post:  

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops – and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."

"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.

Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.

While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined.

Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet.

Read the whole report here. 

Three obvious battle-cries for the McCain campaign:

LOWER TAXES

DRILL FOR OIL 

VICTORY IN IRAQ

They’re short and sweet. They need to be called out loud and clear and often. 

And they are winners. 

 It makes the media and the Democrats mad – so mad they don’t want to report it or acknowledge it. 

But it is great news.

For news of victory, Americans may have to look to the foreign press. For example, the Times of London, which carried a piece by Marie Colvin the other day. She reported that "American and Iraqi forces are driving al Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror."

Read the whole article from which this is taken here.