Iraq: al-Qaeda offers Obama truce?
Two Iraqi insurgent groups called on president-elect Barack Obama to withdraw US forces from Iraq, an Internet monitoring service reported Nov. 7. Abu Omar al-Baghdadi of the Islamic State of Iraq said it would be better "for you and us" to "withdraw your forces," according to the SITE Intelligence Group. "You do not interfere in the affairs of our countries," he continued in an apparent reference to Muslim nations. "We, in turn, will not prevent commerce with you, whether it is in oil or otherwise."
Al-Baghdadi blamed the global financial crisis on the wars "launched in Muslim countries" adding that he was issuing the call on behalf of "my brothers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Chechnya."
The US military says al-Baghdadi is an actor who provides a voice for al-Qaeda in Iraq propaganda.
In a separate statement, the Mujahedeen Army urged Obama to withdraw US forces from Iraq or face "days that will be more difficult than the nightmare experienced by his predecessor."
The authenticity of the statements couldn't be verified. (AP, Nov. 7)
See our last posts on Iraq, al-Qaeda and the insurgency.
Checkmate
Carl Hultberg writes for his RagMag e-mail list:
Are we brilliant or what? No sooner did we paint ourselves into a corner with a stupid wasteful brutal war we could never win in Iraq, only succeeding in alienating the entire Islamic world, than we somehow, without any premeditation at all, decide to elect the son of a Muslim immigrant from Kenya to be our next supreme leader. Believe me, in all the millennia of warfare in those regions, no one has ever tried that before. And, because this miracle was the product of an unconscious consensus, it appears to the world as it's true essence, an act of God. We don't even know we did it. That's how perfect a move this really is. Get on board everybody, this is when being American gets interesting.