Today it was Al-Qaida’s No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri’s turn to try his hand at videoblogging.
It was the third time this week that a prominent Al-Qaeda extremist put out a message to the world and the second terrorist internet video posting along with the earlier al-Zarqawi video this week.
Zawahiri attacked the US in familiar words spoken by the Democratic Hawk John Murtha earlier this year:
The video by Ayman al-Zawahri, posted on an Islamic militant Web forum, came within the same week as an audiotape by al-Qaida’s top leader Osama bin Laden and a video by the head of al-Qaida’s branch in Iraq — a volley of messages by the group’s most prominent figures.
Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian militant believed to be hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan, also denounced the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq as “traitors” and called on Muslims to rise up to “confront them.”
He said that U.S. and British forces in Iraq had bogged down in Iraq and “have achieved nothing but loss, disaster and misfortune.”
Al-Qaida in Iraq “alone has carried out 800 martyrdom operations (suicide attacks) in three years, besides the sacrifices of the other mujahedeen, and this is what has broken the back of American in Iraq,” al-Zawahri said.
If you look at the numbers, Zawahiri is really bragging about the slaughter of fellow Muslims in this new video.
The Brookings Institute reports that 692 multiple bombing attacks took place in Iraq since the start of the war. Of those, at least 290 were suicide bombings.
6,136 Iraqis were killed in these bombings.
As far as US fatalities, 772 were killed by IED’s, 121 in car bombs.
Zawahiri also threatened President Musharraf from Pakistan:
Al-Zawahri’s 16-minute video posted Saturday, entitled “A Message to the People of Pakistan,” was mainly dedicated to criticism of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, accusing him of undermining his own country to help the United States, Israel and India.
There was no date in the video, but al-Zawahri mentioned a “recent” visit in early March by President Bush to India and Pakistan. During the visit, Bush “gave a great push to India’s nuclear program while handing out orders and instructions in Pakistan,” al-Zawahri said.
“Every soldier and officer in the Pakistani military should know that Musharraf is throwing them into the burner of civil war in return for the bribes he is getting from the United States,” al-Zawahri said
“For this reason I call on every soldier and officer in the Pakistani army to disobey the orders of his commanders to kill Muslims in Pakistan or Afghanistan or otherwise he will be confronted by the mujahedeen,” he said.
It sounds like Zawahiri did not appreciate the dinner party blast that targeted him earlier this year and killed Midhat Mursi, al Qaeda’s master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert .
Also, today Athena has troubling news from Waziristan.
