Sorry meant to post this to: http://warintel.blogspot.com/
Will leave it up, G

New Bin Laden Image

Biny has been suffering from liver disease and heart complications, from the fluid build up.
He is on O2 and has a feeding tube.

Question is if he is still alive, he is unable to make a fist his fingers are so swollen.
Gerald

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Beginning of the End for Al Qaeda?

By Paul Cruickshank

Peter Bergen (my colleague at the NYU Center on Law and Security) and myself have a cover story out in the latest issue of the New Republic -- published online last week and now on news stands --- entitled the ‘Jihadist Revolt against Bin Laden.’ We report that key figures in the Jihadist movement, many of them veterans of the Afghan anti-Soviet Jihad, are increasingly publicly repudiating Bin Laden, alarmed by Al Qaeda’s indiscriminate targeting of civilians and the fact that most of its victims since 9/11 have been Muslim.

Although several veterans of the Afghan Jihad saw 9/11 as an illegitimate attack on civilians and a blunder by Bin Laden because Jihadists lost their ability to train in Afghanistan, the emergence of a fully-fledged ‘Jihadist Critique’ of Al Qaeda was almost certainly delayed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, ‘a cause celebre’ for Jihadists around the world.

Since then, however, al Qaeda’s brutal campaign of violence in Iraq (over 10,000 Iraqis have been killed by Al Qaeda’s suicide bombers) has horrified even battle-hardened Jihadists, and ideologues once closely aligned with al Qaeda. One such jihadist, Sayyid Imam al Sharif is profiled this week by Larry Wright (also a fellow at the NYU Center on Law and Security) in the New Yorker.

While mainstream Muslim leaders have long criticized Al Qaeda, the new wave of criticism coming from key figures in the jihadist movement has real extra bite, because it is very difficult for Bin Laden to dismiss the arguments of jihadist leaders who once fought at his side, or provided guidance to his organization, or inspired his recruits. To the degree that this makes radical leaning youngsters from London to Lahore think twice about joining al Qaeda, this could be a watershed moment in the war on terrorism. Here is our assessment of just how impactful this new jihadist critique has been.

May 28, 2008 08:01 PM Link

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

From Jawa:

Report: al Qaeda Discussing "Why we lost in Iraq"

It seems that the jihadis are finally admitting what we've know for months: they've lost in Iraq. It's stunning. Not so much that al Qaeda has lost in Iraq, but that they're online supporters are now admitting it. Just a few months ago my reading of the online discourse was that al Qaeda's fans were in total denial, continuing to call us the "United States of Losers" in Iraq.

For any of them to admit defeat is a real victory. If this report is correct, its importance cannot be overstated. Why? Because a key to insurgency recruitment has always been hope for victory. Far fewer people are willing to risk death in a cause they believe they cannot win. Hence, al Qaeda has long pushed propaganda designed to present an image of imminent victory in Iraq.

Since so many al Qaeda operatives are always dying, a key to keeping up the fight is in recruiting. But the perception of defeat means far fewer recruits, translating into weaker fighting ability.

Strategy Page:

Al Qaeda web sites are making a lot of noise about "why we lost in Iraq." Western intelligence agencies are fascinated by the statistics being posted in several of these Arab language sites. Not the kind of stuff you read about in the Western media. According to al Qaeda, their collapse in Iraq was steep and catastrophic. According to their stats, in late 2006, al Qaeda was responsible for 60 percent of the terrorist attacks, and nearly all the ones that involved killing a lot of civilians. The rest of the violence was carried out by Iraqi Sunni Arab groups, who were trying in vain to scare the Americans out of the country.

Read the rest.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Rusty at Jawa, we were discussing ops and he said "The depth of their stupidity is never ending."

When fighting the Taliban or al Qaeda this is good to keep in mind.

Gerald