As Americans celebrate the 4th of July today, Al Qaeda’s top deputy Ayman Zawahiri is appearing in a new internet video praising jihadi fighters in Iraq and elsewhere. Dressed in all white and sitting before a news studio background, Zawahiri warns Americans that “Today, the wind - by grace of Allah - is blowing against Washington.”Of course, there was a moment of levity:
In the hour and half long video, which surfaced today on the website Strategic Translations, a translation and terror analysis firm, Zawahiri urges his followers to hurry to Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Somalia.
He also offers a message of confidence to the jihadi fighters in prison saying that victory in Iraq and Afghanistan will come soon.
“You must be patient and steadfast,” he says. “Rejoice, for victory is near, with Allah’s permission, and the herds of crusaders have begun to split up and their sole concern has become searching for a way out.”
"Do the prison cells of Egypt now have fax machines?" he asks disbelievingly, "and I wonder, are they connected to the same line as the electric shock machine or do they have a separate line?"Does every cave in Pakistan have a satellite phone and video studio to produce these messages, or has the cave life gotten too difficult for Osama, who has not appeared in one of these vanity tapes in quite some time? Besides, the logic is astounding, as though a prison could not receive a fax at a central office and then provide said fax to the prisoner in question? YNetNews notes that the message was a call for Muslims to take up arms. It was a rally around the jihad message. Stop the ACLU has a roundup of reaction.
Al Qaeda remains dangerous, but they know that they have to pull something significant off because they're getting hammered in Iraq and Afghanistan. It may turn out that the failed British bomb plot was going to be just the thing they needed to kick start their recruitment ops, but the video didn't make mention of the plot (or its failure).
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