Hmmm - no statement from al Qaeda re: Abu Ghraib? Why not?

The scandal should be a made-for-Osama occasion to rally Iraqis to his cause. Yet al Qaeda seems strangely silent.

In fact, it seems preoccupied with inciting Shiite/Sunni rivalry with seemingly senseless sectarian violence, attempting to blow apart Iraqi unity against the invader.

Gosh, oh golly gee - whatever could it mean?

:(

Daniel Pearl wasn't captured by Al Queda. From the CNN obituary.

"He was in Karachi, Pakistan, working on a story about the Islamic militant underground when he was kidnapped January 23 by a group calling itself the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty."

It is known that one of the people convicted of his kidnapping and execution, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, has links with Al Queda but it is misleading in the extreme to say that Pearl was kidnapped by Al Queda.

I'm pointing this out simply to say that Al Queda are not the only bad guys out there.

Like you, I'm just sick of that shit.

The Arab world has seen the photos and heard the stories-- what more is there to say, when we have proven to be our own worse enemy?

by the photos. It shows them in a not very brave light. They look like animals being taken to the slaughter. They like photos of suicide bombers and brave soldiers ready to give their lives for the cause. ...not these types of photos...

the humiliation has been like gasoline on a fire. People aren't humbled and broken, they want blood. So where's the Al Qaeda recruitment drive?

re: the recruitment drive. it's there. personnel and administrative offices are still in in remote third-world locations. only the advertising has been outsourced to the united states. advertising, entertainment, and pr are our biggest industries these days, you know.

They just don't want the images of their brethren shown in such a weak and humiliating posture.

the abuse of the detainees is their best recruiting tool.

if Bin Laden gets involved it will allow bush* to sidetrack the issue into 'the War on Terrorism' thing. So possibly it is the sensible thing for Bin Laden not to go too public on this issue.

I don't think these revelations will necessarily cause an Al Qaeda recruiting boom in Iraq.

First of all, Iraqis don't need Al Qaeda to tell them to hate or at least distrust Americans. I think they figured that out on their own. Many of them might get turned off by the wacky jihadism of Al Qaeda, just as we might be turned off by wacky Christians interpreting the destruction of the WTC as the result of tolerating gays and the ACLU. No -- there's enough fury and savagely wounded honor to fuel Iraqi anger and committment to expelling the American occupation, without Al Qaeda getting involved. Osama's wacky spin on events -- the spiral of violence in their daily lives -- will not be welcomed by many.

Second of all -- Al Qaeda hurts Muslims too -- they have attacked within Syria, Jordan, Iran, Libya and Iraq. Iraqis don't want these wacko jihadists disrupting their lives, wrecking chaos and death around them, any more than they want US troops shooting them, levelling their homes, bombing them.

While there may be factions in Iraq that are sympathetic to Al Qaeda (Iraq has its own wacky fundamentalist problem), I think most Iraqis have become Iraqi nationalist insurgents, not jihadists. They're fighting for Iraq. If they are fighting for "Islam," it is not in the abstract, as Al Qaeda does, but rather as Islam as a code of morality, which they believe barbarous Americans have outraged.