...'Imperial Hubris: the West is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America'. Dr Scheuer is senior fellow with The Jamestown Foundation. Bracketed explanations and the underlining are by APS):

"Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's latest message is one of the richest, most comprehensive and starkly realistic he has issued since...[March 2003]. This essay considers al-Qaeda's dour recognition of its inability to control...events in Iraq as a small vanguard organization and a non-Iraqi presence in the country.

"On December 29, 2007, bin Laden issued a 56-minute statement that addressed Muslim insurgents in Iraq and built on his earlier message from October 22. The new statement was issued via al-Qaeda's media arm, al-Sahab, and appeared on several Internet sites without pre-publication excerpts on al-Jazeera television. Al-Jazeera's editing of the October 22 audiotape distorted bin Laden's message, incorrectly giving the implication that he was saying 'all is lost' for the mujahideen in Iraq. (Al-Jazeera customarily deletes anything critical of the Saudi regime from bin Laden's messages. This occurred in the case of the Oct. 22 tape and al-Qaeda apparently did not want to take a chance on al-Jazeera's penchant for politically correct editing with its most recent message).

"The latest bin Laden tape is - like its October 22 predecessor - pre-eminently a post-Iraq war tape. In both tapes, bin Laden declares that the...[US] recognizes that its Coalition has been militarily defeated in Iraq and predicts that US and other foreign forces will leave.

"Bin Laden does not provide the date US-led forces will withdraw; he focuses...on working with Islamist [Neo-Salafi] insurgents in Iraq to ensure the Americans and their Arab-government allies cannot build a national unity government that is an 'agent to America', dominated by non-Islamists and ready to permit the US basing rights and access to Iraqi oil.

"Because US-led forces have accepted military defeat, bin Laden argues, Washington and its allies must look for other...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.




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