Via Brutally Honest;

One of Al Qaeda’s senior theologians is calling on his followers to end their military jihad and saying the attacks of September 11, 2001, were a “catastrophe for all Muslims.”
In a serialized manifesto written from prison in Egypt, Sayyed Imam al-Sharif is blasting Osama bin Laden for deceiving the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and for insulting the Prophet Muhammad by comparing the September 11 attacks to the early raids of the Ansar warriors. The lapsed jihadist even calls for the formation of a special Islamic court to try Osama bin Laden and his old comrade Ayman al-Zawahri.
The disclosures from Mr. Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl and Abd al-Qadir ibn Abd al-Aziz, have already opened a rift at the highest levels of Al Qaeda. The group’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, a former associate of the defecting theologian in Egypt, personally mocked him last month in a video, remarking that he was unaware Egyptian prisons had fax machines. Meanwhile, leading Western analysts are saying the defection of Mr. Sharif indicates the beginning of the end for Al Qaeda.
The author of “Inside Al Qaeda,” Rohan Gunaratna said in an interview this week, “There is nothing more important than a former jihadist as important as Dr. Fadl criticizing the jihadist vanguard.” Mr. Gunaratna, who acts at times as a consultant for American and Western intelligence, described the reformed theologian as “both an ideologue and operational leader, but he was primarily an ideologue.”
An expert on Islamic terrorism with the Jamestown Foundation, Steven Ulph, also said the defection of Mr. Sharif could hemorrhage support for Al Qaeda. “The important point to make, when you have the combination of a respected ideologue, plus someone who was in the field, say these things it is more important than having a Saudi sheik that moderates his message,” he said.

Gaza edition.

60 Minutes;

.. got a rare glimpse into a Guantanamo case — one of the first that will be prosecuted. Consider this: is Omar Khadr a hardened terrorist — a bad seed, or an obedient son, led astray by his family?

I’ll settle for dead ender.
Video here.
(h/t Sammy in the comments)

Michael Totten has a first rate report out of Ramadi;

The Provincial Security Forces are a “national guard” of sorts controlled by the tribal authorities in addition to the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police in the area. They resemble a militia in some ways, but they’re a legal branch of the Iraqi security forces, authorized and paid by the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad.
“An ice truck dropped off its ice at a checkpoint,” he continued. “The truck behind it in line exploded. Everybody was killed. For a five or six hour period we weren’t sure the PSF would go back to work. But eight hours later they were back in business. They are 100 percent committed to anti-terrorism and anti-sectarianism.”
“What’s the worst thing you’ve seen here?” I said.
He wasn’t sure what to say and had to think about his answer for a few moments.
“The worst thing I’ve seen, I think, is the aftermath of a VBIED,” he said.
A VBIED is a vehicle-born improvised explosive device. In other words, a car bomb.
“I’ve seen that about ten times,” he continued. “Some people are turned, literally, into red blotches. Some are just vaporized. Their families will never see them again, not even their bodies. And the smell…there’s this awful car bomb smell, the acrid stench of homemade explosives and diesel fuel. Nothing else in the world has that smell. Most of the VBIEDs were intended for civilians, but the Iraqi Police usually stopped them first at the checkpoints. So they were the ones who usually got blown up. The driver of the VBIED would panic because he was caught and then kill everyone at the checkpoint. Nevertheless, the Iraqi Police kept bravely manning the checkpoints and replacing the police who were murdered. I’m telling you, they aren’t doing that for 310 dollars a month.”

That’s just a taste, Be sure to read it all.

The assassination of popular Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Resha has backfired. Via AJStrata;

More than 1,200 Iraqi males from in and around Tarmiyah stood in line for hours to join Iraqi Security Forces, local sheiks and Coalition Forces in the fight against al-Qaeda and other insurgent militias in Tarmiyah Sept. 12.

Much more at the link.

“Ahmadinejad would be captured by American “students” and held hostage for over a year, paraded before TV cameras and threatened almost daily with death.”

There’s still time.

INDC: Security has improved a lot; I was here in January and things were very bad. Why has security improved so much?
Mukhtar: The people of Fallujah, now they know the truth of the terrorists, the mujahadeen. Now they know that these people are not working for Fallujah; no, they are working against the people here. So they’ve changed their minds, all of their thinking about the terrorists. Fallujah was a city of peace for a long time. It’s the “city of mosques” and all the people are peaceful, hard workers.
INDC: Why was there so much conflict with the Americans initially?
Mukhtar: We thought America wanted to steal Iraq. And from our perspective as Muslims, you should fight against thieves. And all the people around the world … it’s the same in America … if Iraq went to America to take America, all the people would fight against Iraq. I think we can agree about that.
INDC: What do you think of Americans now?
Mukhtar: The Americans now are peaceful — more than us (laughs). They are helpful and give humanitarian support for the people here.

You can read the rest here.
Related – “American commanders in southern Iraq say Shiite sheiks are showing interest in joining forces with the U.S. military against extremists, in much the same way that Sunni clansmen in the western part of the country have worked with American forces against al-Qaida.”

This morning on local radio they are pondering the question – “is it time to put 9/11 behind us?”
My response – when did we put the invasion of Poland and Pearl Harbor “behind” us? When the war was over.

“A bomb-sniffing dog in Ankara helped Turkish authorities stop a massive terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11. A van full of explosives in a parking garage would have devastated the center of the large city, and it would have served as a counterpoint to the messages released by Osama bin Laden in the past week […] This would make three terrorist attacks thwarted in the past week.”

Letter to a Friend: On Islamic Fundamentalism (Sept. 11, 2006);

Today is September 11th and I suppose every single person in this country knows what they were doing on this date five years ago. I recall the feeling of unreality I had as I watched a small TV screen here at home repeatedly play tiny images of two towers collapsing. And then, in the immediate aftermath, do you remember how many in this country – especially among intellectuals and academics – wanted to discuss what “we” had done to “deserve” this? Those were hard days, and in many respects the years since then have been harder still, for although I had by then already spent decades in the strange ideological climate of American academic life, I never expected to see such an orgy of “blame America first” unleashed in this country. Nor did I have any way of anticipating how serious the real consequences would be when those attitudes, nurtured in the idle confines of academia, spilled over into the very dangerous world outside.
I would hate it if our old friendship were to dissolve over politics, mere politics. But I can’t not respond to your last letter, in which you stated that you were just as worried by Christian as by Muslim fundamentalists. Repeatedly in the past few years I’ve heard acquaintances, even relatives, express the same view. To my mind, however, this is a preposterous comment, for it evades the crucial recognition that something new has been unfolding before our eyes. Not that 9/11 inaugurated that new stage. I think, rather, it marked the end of the beginning, and the subsequent stage, the middle part, is still underway.

h/t
At Wizbang, 6 Years Later.
Roger Simon reviews World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism – “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
And Lileks.
Related links are welcome in the comments.

Via Damian Penny;

Osama Bin Laden’s widely publicized video address to the American people has a peculiarity that casts serious doubt on its authenticity: the video freezes at about 1 minute and 36 58 seconds, and motion only resumes again at 12:30. The video then freezes again at 14:02 remains frozen until the end. All references to current events, such as the 62nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan, and Sarkozy and Brown being the leaders of France and the UK, respectively, occur when the video is frozen! The words spoken when the video is in motion contain no references to contemporary events and could have been (and likely were) made before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Or during the Democratic national convention. There’s word today that there’s another Bin Laden video set for release. If the previous one is any indication, expect a cameo appearance by Michael Moore.

Or in this case, cannon fodder for media consumption;

This is a win-win strategy for Hamas and IJ. If Israeli soldiers are able to recognize that children are on the battlefield and refrain from firing, terrorists are able to retrieve their equipment and use it to kill Israelis another day. If the IDF destroys the launchers, Israel suffers the public relations fallout from being accused of killing children. I’m not sure, in the minds of the members of Hamas, which is better: retrieving the rocket launchers, or seeing Israel globally condemned for child-murder. I’m going to guess the latter.

In the Democrats’ hard fought battle for defeat;

The U.S. military surge, widely denounced as a last-ditch effort by an embattled, lame-duck president fighting an un-winnable civil war, is working. Even as vocal a war critic as Deputy Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has now acknowledged as much, telling CNN that the U.S. military is “making real progress.”
Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the multi-national force in Iraq and author of the counterinsurgency surge strategy now underway, told Talk Radio host Allen Colmes that during the past seven weeks, U.S. troops have inflicted “enormous damage” on al Qaeda forces in Iraq, causing three times the losses sustained by coalition forces. Petraeus added that al Qaeda in Iraq, which is responsible for most of the high-profile car bombings and suicide attacks, has been “clearly linked to the… al Qaeda senior leadership, located in the Pakistan Afghanistan border trial areas.” In other words, beating al Qaeda in Iraq is clearly a serious blow to Osama bin Laden wherever he is hiding.

Russ Vaughn;

Yes, I know there are legions of liberals, so blinded by their certainty that the Supreme Court cheated Al Gore out of the presidency that they actually profess to believe that there were no ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq. To them I would say consider this: Syria had ties to Al Qaeda; Jordan had ties to Al Qaeda; Egypt had ties to Al Qaeda; Yemen had ties to Al Qaeda; Somalia had ties to Al Qaeda; Saudi Arabia had ties to Al Qaeda; the various Gulf monarchies had ties to Al Qaeda; Iran had ties to Al Qaeda; Pakistan had ties to Al Qaeda; Indonesia, the Philippines, North Korea and several of the former Soviet satellites under Muslim rule had ties to Al Qaeda.
But not Iraq.

Times Online;

Fed up with being part of a group that cuts off a person’s face with piano wire to teach others a lesson, dozens of low-level members of al-Qaeda in Iraq are daring to become informants for the US military in a hostile Baghdad neighbourhood.
The ground-breaking move in Doura is part of a wider trend that has started in other al-Qaeda hotspots across the country and in which Sunni insurgent groups and tribal sheikhs have stood together with the coalition against the extremist movement.
[…]
The increased presence of US forces in Doura, however, is encouraging insiders to overcome their fear and divulge what they know. Convoys of US soldiers are working the rubble-strewn streets day and night, knocking on doors, speaking to locals and following up leads on possible insurgent hideouts.
“People in al-Qaeda come to us and give us information,” said Lieutenant Scott Flanigan, as he drove past a line of fruit and vegetable stalls near a shabby shopping street in Doura, where people were buying bread and other groceries.
The informants were not seeking an amnesty for crimes that they had committed. “They just do not want to be killed,” Lieutenant Flanigan said.

h/t

A message to the World Wide Jihad from deep inside the compost.
More – “reverse engineering a prophecy”.
(And speaking of terrorists whose cells have stopped dividing….)

HH: I’m joined now by satellite phone from Baghdad by intrepid reporter Michael Yon. He’s actually in Baquba. Michael, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show, always a pleasure to speak with you. How goes the fighting on the ground?
MY: Well, it’s really slowed down here in Baquba, Hugh. I was just in the TOC or the headquarters about fifteen minutes ago before I came on the show, and they were like the Maytag repairmen here. I mean, Baquba has just…you know, it was a very serious fight when it started, Operation Arrowhead Ripper on the 19th of June, I came in with them, but it quickly abated. The people have just turned against al Qaeda here. And so Baquba is really, the big fight now is to get the food distribution working again, which it already is. You know, they’ve got that going. And now, they’re working on fuel, because the fuel relates to electricity and water pumping. So really, they’re working on more civic things now. There’s still some combat to do, but not a lot, actually, because like I said, you know, the people just turned against al Qaeda.
HH: Now Michael Yon, a lot of people don’t know the significance of Baquba. And so can you explain what peace in Baquba means for the larger war effort?
MY: Well, it’s huge, because al Qaeda had claimed Baquba as their capitol, their worldwide capitol. And you might recall one of the things that kind of upsets people about my reporting is I said Iraq was in a civil war, and I said that way back in February of 2005, and I continue to do so. But when I first wrote that, I was in Baquba, in 2005, and I spent two or three months here. And it was just total…you could see it, and you could see al Qaeda was trying to foment that civil war, because that’s their underlying strategy, is to do that. And so getting, fracturing al Qaeda here, and al Qaeda alienating so many Iraqis, it’s helping us to put a damper on the civil war.
HH: Now yesterday, Harry Reid said on the floor of the Senate that the surge has failed. Do you think there’s any factual basis for making that assertion, Michael Yon, from what you’ve seen in Iraq over the last many months?
MY: He’s wrong, he’s wrong. It has absolutely not failed, and in fact, I’m finally willing to say it in public. I feel like it’s starting to succeed. And you know, I’m kind of stretching a little bit, because we haven’t gone too far into it, but I can see it from my travels around, for instance, in Anbar and out here in Diyala Province as well. Baghdad’s still very problematic. But there’s other areas where you can clearly see that there is a positive effect. And the first and foremost thing we have to do is knock down al Qaeda. And with them alienating so many Iraqis, I mean, they’re almost doing it for us. I mean, yeah, it takes military might to finally like wipe them out of Baquba, but it’s working. I mean, I sense that the surge is working. Reid is just wrong.

Here’s the rest.

At Belmont Club, a description of the contents of a 23 minute tape by Ayman al-Zawahiri, pleading for more “sandals on the ground” ;

Zawahiri reminds his listeners of the establishment of the Caliphate-in-exile “which everybody applauded”; but bitterly notes that some of those who once clapped now opposed the Islamic State of Iraq “because it is not empowered”, which I can only take to mean “in declining fortune”. But never fear, he now claims, the “wind is blowing against Washington”. Then he digresses and excoriates the Saudis, contrasting the way they sent the youth for Jihad into Afghanistan and but now have forbidden young men to go into Iraq; and who Zawahiri accuses of working tirelessly on behalf of the Americans to deliver Muslim lands into the hands of the Jew! He then switches to a audio clip from a commander who asks why he is getting no reinforcements, why Muslim scholars are hanging back from endorsing their struggle. At this point in watching the video, I realized that although the idea of the “moderate Muslim” may be laughed to scorn by conservatives, the concept was real to Zawahiri at least, as a bitter and galling reality. He seemed disappointed that the Ummah was not prepared to go as far as he.
The degree of despair can be gathered from the video’s choice of metaphor. The Al-Qaeda tape compared the Muslim debates over whether or to follow it’s lead in the Jihad to the idle discussions within Constantinople over how many devils could stand on the tip of a pin as the Muslims were battering the walls with catapaults — except this time the roles were reversed. It was the hated Americans were doing the battering and the bickering Muslims who were counting the devils upon the pins. Even allowing for hyperbole, the choice of metaphor does little to convey confidence.
[…]
Zawahiri then goes and declares how pure the al-Qaeda in Iraq is compared to Hamas, how unstained by innocent blood. He says this with a straight face, but his whiskers have me at a disadvantage. Then having denied any misdeeds, he makes the extraordinary offer to submit the Caliphate’s leaders and men to Muslim judicial proceedings — some kind of Islamic International Criminal Court — strange that the Brussel’s ICC’s writ runs so short that Zawahiri doesn’t even consider it from across the Mediterranean Sea. And my guess on hearing these words is that Zawahiri is feeling the heat, despite his disclaimers of innocence and heading off the complaints about al-Qaeda’s bloody tactics in Iraq. He is saying “I promise to cooperate fully with any investigation”. That would be the way it would be phrased in Washington. Then he claims is being wronged by the Mainstream Media, which reserves favorable coverage for those bozos Hamas when they are thugs, while his pure warriors are depicted as baby-killers by ignorant correspondents. (Snicker. – Ed)
Zawahiri’s explains that al-Qaeda’s counterattacked in Iraq was to save it from the defeat which overtook Afghanistan. He says so plainly. He saw it — initially at least — as fundamentally defensive in character; a blocking action to an imminent American threat. And in my opinion, his great fortune lay in that Iraq was so close, to the sources of his Arabian manpower pool that he was able generate a much greater force than has been possible in Afghanistan. And yet despite the advantage of fighting in the heart of the Arab World he was running out of recruits, which is the entire point of his whole video. Maybe the American strategy of turning the Sunnis against the al-Qaeda has had international repercussions on his recruiting. Word is filtering back to other Arab countries that al-Qaeda is the enemy; that it’s not all it was cracked up to be when it could be viewed from the romantic distance of Afghanistan. Up close it was ugly. In an indirect way the battlefield has produced what diplomacy was supposed to and could not. It has alienated al-Qaeda from some of its Sunni base. If I am right, it’s a thunderclap.

The tape can be viewed at Powerline.
At Memri, another summary of the tape’s main themes.

“His poor family. They figured he must have been referring to Live Earth and sat through 14 hours expecting to see him, Dr Mohammed, Dr Muhammed, Dr Mohammad and Dr Muhammad as back-up singers to Cat Stevens.”