'Zawahiri Tape' Calls for Fortress Islam in Iraq
THE GUARDIAN: A message claiming to be from al-Qaida's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has called on Muslims to turn Iraq into the "fortress of Islam".

In the second such audio message in a month, the speaker said the battle for the establishment of a greater Islamic state was the "most important duty" of every Muslim.

The call to arms came in a 16-minute long audio file posted on the internet to mark the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The authenticity of the tape could not immediately be verified but the voice was said by experts to sound like Zawahiri.

In the speech entitled, Five years after the Invasion of Iraq and Decades of Injustice by the Tyrants, the speaker refers to US Iraqi commander General David Petraeus's recent testimony to the US Congress, and to a textile worker strike in Egypt on April 6.

The tape reportedly said: "We will only get our rights back with our own hands and not through beggary or fraudulent elections."

It called on Muslims to make Iraq a "fortress of Islam" and railed against Shia Iran for siding with the US against Iraq – a plot which he said would lead to an explosion of violence in the Middle East.

Zawahiri, an Egyptian-born surgeon thought to be in hiding in Pakistan or Afghanistan, regularly appears in video or audio clips. Earlier this month, he pulled off a propaganda coup for al-Qaida by answering questions from hundreds of people invited to take part in an online "open meeting".

In the internet Q&A he justified attacks against "crusaders", Jews, and their agents, predicted that "jihadi influence" will spread to Jerusalem after the US leaves Iraq and attacked the UN as "the enemy of Islam".

He also claimed that Bin Laden was "healthy and well". [Source: 'Zawahiri Tape' Calls for Fortress Islam in Iraq] By Anil Dawar and agencies | April 18, 2008

Al-Zawahiri Audio Tape HERE

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)

Democracy Cannot Be Brought to an Islamic Country. It is a Contradiction in Terms
The war is lost. Americans should begin to deal with what that means.

LA TIMES: LOSING HURTS MORE than winning feels good. This simple maxim applies with equal power to virtually all areas of human interaction: sports, finance, love. And war.

Defeat in war damages societies quite out of proportion to what a rational calculation of cost would predict. The United States absorbed the loss in Vietnam quite easily on paper, for example, but the societal effects of defeat linger to this day. The Afghanistan debacle was an underrated contributor to Soviet malaise in the 1980s and a factor in perestroika, glasnost and eventually the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Defeats can have unintended, seemingly inexplicable consequences.

And as any sports fan can tell you, the only thing that feels worse than a loss is an upset. An upset demands explanation and requires that responsible parties be punished.

The endgame in Iraq is now clear, in outline if not detail, and it appears that the heavily favored United States will be upset. Once support for a war is lost, it is gone for good; there is no example of a modern democracy having changed its mind once it turned against a war. So we ought to start coming to grips with the meaning of losing in Iraq. Post-traumatic Iraq syndrome (more) By Christopher J Fettweis*

*CHRISTOPHER J. FETTWEIS is assistant professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College.

Mark Alexander

Bush: Twice Warned
LA TIMES: Prewar reports alerted the president to the difficulty of establishing democracy, among other assessments that proved accurate.

WASHINGTON — Two months before the invasion of Iraq, U.S. intelligence agencies twice warned the Bush administration that establishing a democracy there would prove difficult and that Al Qaeda would use political instability to increase its operations, according to a Senate report released Friday.

The report, issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee, brought to light once-classified warnings that accurately forecasted many of the military and political problems the Bush administration and Iraqi officials have faced since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Bush was twice warned of Iraq challenges (more) By James Gerstenzang

Mark Alexander