Al-Qaida leader: British are ‘fleeing’ from Iraq

Al-Zawahri says U.S. officials are ‘lying’ when painting an optimistic picture

Al-Qaida's No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, shown, said in a new video posted Monday that the U.S. is trying to hide its failures in Iraq and warned that the mujahedeen there are increasing in strength.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Al-Qaida's No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, said Britain's handover of security in southern Iraq shows that insurgents are gaining the upper hand in the country.

"Reports from Iraq point to the increasing power of the mujahideen (holy war fighters) and the deteriorating condition of the Americans," Zawahri told an off-camera interviewer from As-Sahab, al-Qaida's media arm, in a video posted on the Internet on Sunday.

"And the decision of the British to flee is sufficient (proof of this)," he said, sitting beside shelves full of books.

The video, carried by Islamic Web sites, was issued as Britain handed over security to Iraqi forces in the last of four provinces it once patrolled, effectively marking the end of nearly five years of British control of southern Iraq.

"Iraq is the most important of the fields" in which Islamic militants are fighting, Zawahri said on the video, which carried English subtitles.

Zawahri dismissed optimistic remarks made by current U.S. officials.

"Either the American administration is lying outrageously ... or the Americans have not learned anything from four years of war ... as they did not learn from their defeat in Vietnam," he said.

Zawahri said agents might have infiltrated the ranks of the al-Qaida-linked group Islamic State in Iraq to carry out attacks on the innocent and commit other crimes, in order to encourage Sunni groups to ally themselves with U.S.-led forces against al-Qaida. He called for a swift investigation of this.

"If it becomes clear that some group is involved in these crimes, they should be exposed to defeat the plots of the Americans," he said, calling on other insurgent groups to unite with Islamic State in Iraq.

The Web sites carrying the video invited sympathizers to send in questions during the next month for Zawahri to answer in an "open interview."

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22287956/

Al-Qaida leader to take questions via Internet

First time a top leader has offered an ‘interview’ since the Sept. 11 attacks

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida has invited journalists to send questions to its No. 2 figure Ayman al-Zawahri, the first time the terror network has offered an "interview" with one of its top leaders since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S.

The invitation — issued by Al-Sahab, the group's media arm on an Islamic militant Web site — is the latest in al-Qaida's increasingly sophisticated efforts to get out its message. Al-Sahab has dramatically increased the number of messages it has issued this year, and its videos have shown more complex production.

The statement, first posted on Sunday, invites "individuals, agencies and all media" to submit written questions for al-Zawahri by sending them to the Islamic Web forums where Al-Sahab traditionally posts its messages.

Al-Sahab asked the forums to send it the questions "by the letter, with no changes or substitutions, no matter whether they agree or disagree (with the question)."

It said it would take questions until Jan. 16, then al-Zawahri would answer them "as much as he is able and at the soonest possible occasion." It did not say whether his answers would come in a written, video or audio-tape form.

The authenticity of the invitation could not be independently confirmed. It was posted with the logo of Al-Sahab and the style of graphics and calligraphy it traditionally uses, along with a photo of al-Zawahri. The message appeared on several Web sites that Al-Sahab officially uses for issuing statements.

Al-Zawahri, the deputy of Osama bin Laden, appeared in a videotape posted Monday that took the form of an interview with Al-Sahab. An unseen interviewer could be heard on the video asking questions to the Egyptian-born militant, who answered, sitting in front of shelves stacked with books of Islamic law and theology.

No interviews with top official since 9/11
Al-Zawahri and bin Laden gave a few interviews to Western and Arabic press since they first rose to prominence in the 1990s. But neither has been interviewed since the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, which toppled al-Qaida's patrons the Taliban and sent al-Qaida's leaders into hiding.

Bin Laden and al-Zawahri are believed to be in the lawless regions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Al-Zwahri is one of the most prominent spokesmen for al-Qaida, appearing in at least 16 videos or audiotapes this year _ far more than the four put out by bin Laden. Al-Qaida's messaging has dramatically increased this year, with Al-Sahab issuing more than 90 videos in 2007, more than the total number for all three previous years, according to IntelCenter, a U.S. counterterrorism center that monitors militant message trafficking.

The videos have also grown more sophisticated in targeting their international audience. Videos by the top leaders are always subtitled in English, and messages this year from bin Laden and al-Zawahri focusing on Pakistan and Afghanistan have been dubbed in the local languages, Urdu and Pashtun.

Since 2000, al-Qaeda has run its own media production company, al-Sahab, which means "the clouds" in Arabic, an allusion to the misty mountain peaks of Afghanistan.

Until two years ago, al-Sahab was dependent on broadcasters such as the al-Jazeera satellite television network to air its videos and could distribute only short clips on the Internet. But then it achieved a spectacular breakthrough. Taking advantage of technological advances and bandwidth expansion, it began posting videos directly on the Internet, relying on an anonymous global network of webmasters to shield their electronic tracks.

In 2005, al-Sahab released 16 videos. This year, it has produced four times that number. Quality has improved markedly, with most videos now including subtitles in several languages and sometimes 3-D animation.

"If you want to stop al-Qaeda on the communications front, you should concentrate on their IT manager instead of Osama," said Muhammad Amir Rana, director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, a research group in Lahore, Pakistan, that studies militant groups.

Al-Sahab can now record and release videos with astonishing speed. When Pakistani forces stormed Islamabad's Red Mosque on July 10, resulting in more than 80 deaths, Zawahiri responded the next day with an audiotaped speech, calling the raid "an act of criminal aggression."

Al-Sahab mixes low-tech and high-tech tricks to prevent spy agencies from blocking its releases or tracing videos back to their source, said Evan F. Kohlmann, a New York-based counterterrorism analyst.

The videos are routed through a chain of couriers who hand-deliver them to computer gurus, probably in Pakistan, he said.

They, in turn, electronically send the files to others around the world who upload them to free or hijacked Web sites.

"The process of tracing this stuff back is not that easy," Kohlmann said. "They've created breaks in the distribution chain, both electronic breaks and human breaks."

    Find al-queda's media production company al-Sahab, you find Osama Bin Ladin and al-zawahri. Surely the CIA has it's own version of the Matrix "Agent Smith" who are capable of finding the source of al-Sahab if it really wanted to, instead of waterboarding mentally ill al-queda detainees. You can't tell me the CIA doesn't have the technology to trace al-queda videos. I find it hard to believe that al-sahab can do what it does without some complicity on the part of elements in Pakistan intelligence and elements in the Bush CIA intelligence. Al-queda propaganda videos are good for the neo-cons and war profiteers who want perpetual war.

tags: war on terror  al zawahri  osama bin ladin  cia  bush  afghanistan  pakistan  internet  torture  war  

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