President Relies on Forged Letter in Today’s Speech

In his recent letter, Zawahiri writes that al Qaeda views Iraq as, quote, “the place of the greatest battle.” The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. We must recognize Iraq as the central front in our war against the terrorists.

Third, these militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all modern governments in the region and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia. Zawahiri writes that the terrorists, quote, “must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq.” He goes on to say the jihad requires several incremental goals — expel the Americans from Iraq, establish an Islamic authority over as much territory as you can to spread its power in Iraq, extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq. End quote.

The leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claims the letter found by US soldiers in Iraq, which is said to be written by al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri, is false. In a statement released over the Internet he denies the authenticity of the letter, and accuses the US forces of making up the story as a slur on al-Qaeda. In the letter the Pentagon says al-Zawahiri warns that the tactics used by insurgents in Iraq risk alienating the wider Muslim population. He also writes that they have lost many of their key leaders.

“Everything in the letter attributed to Ayman al-Zawahiri is false,” al-Zarqawi’s statement says. “We don’t know where they found it or when they found it. We from the al-Qaeda organisation announce that this news is completely unfounded. It is a lie which comes from the military camp of the infidels, from the Green Zone and the command of the crusader campaign, whose news are always far from the truth of the battlefield.” AKI

Mohannad Hage Ali of the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat, cites the tone of the letter as a reason he doubts its authenticity.

In the letter, al-Zawahiri urges al-Zarqawi to stop the beheadings that were carried out by his group and to downplay his vicious attacks on Iraq’s Shiite majority because “we are in a media battle in a race for the hearts and minds” of the Sunnis.

However, Ali says: “The writer, who is supposed to be Zawahiri, sounds like a moderate with pragmatic views. The most recent tape of Zawahiri shows this is not the case. He is as adamant as ever.”

Still, the al-Zawahiri of the recent letter sounds remarkably like the al-Zawahiri from 2001, in both cases saying the jihad could go only so far, and that popular support was crucial.

Others cite instances of bad grammar, a plea for money by the author to send 100,000 (it doesn’t say what), and the almost-chatty mention that he is the father of a new daughter named Nawwar, as out of character for al-Zawahiri.

And even though the letter is supposed to be addressed to al-Zarqawi, the last line says, “By God, if by chance you’re going to Fallujah, send greetings to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” another puzzling inconsistency.

At least one skeptical analyst says clues that one would use to verify the letter — including al-Zawahiri’s mention of how his son, daughter and one of his wives were killed by a U.S. bomb in Afghanistan — were almost too obvious.

The eagerness with which the U.S. military seemed willing to talk about the letter to the media in places like Dubai also aroused suspicion among the already, to put it mildly, wary Arab media. CNN

The Arabic text uses the word Israel, terrorism analyst Stephen Ulph told United Press International.

Ulph, who works with the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, said that typically, jihadists like Zawahiri would use a term like “Zionist entity” to refer to the Jewish state.

“But it could be,” he acknowledged, “that in a private communication, you use it just for brevity.”

Ulph has other reservations about its authenticity — like the way the four stages of the war are spelled out in such detail, when that concept is part of the shared ideology of contemporary Mujahedin.

That same point was echoed by Raymond Ibrahim, a scholar of Arabic history and language. “That would be a given,” he told UPI. “There’s no reason to set it out in so much detail.”

Ibrahim, who prepared a forthcoming collection of newly translated al-Qaida documents, and who has read a great deal of Zawahiri’s writing, both public and private, said that the style of address was both “too chummy and too deferential.”

Usually, he said, Zawahiri’s tone was “more masterful, more commanding.”

“He is the elder, he is the sheikh,” said Ibrahim of Zawahiri, describing parts of the letter as almost a supplication. “He wouldn’t take that tone.”

At one point, the author urges Zarqawi to cease the televised beheadings which have become his gory trademark — and which “the Muslim populace who love and support you will never find palatable” — because hostages can be killed just as easily with bullets.

But to demonstrate his jihadi bona fides, the author confides that he “has tasted the bitterness of American brutality,” and that his “favorite wife,” son and young daughter had been crushed when the house they were in was leveled — presumably by the U.S. military — and he does not know where the bodies are.

“Were they brought out of the rubble, or are they still buried beneath it to this day?” the author plaintively inquires.

Ibrahim points out that Zawahiri and Zarqawi are not exactly old friends — some believe they have never actually met.

“His other letters, even to people that he does know very well, don’t have such intimate revelations in them,” he said. “It doesn’t sound too much like him.”

On balance, Ibrahim said, “I tend to think it is a forgery.” UPI

A letter purportedly written by a senior al Qaeda leader — and said to be authentic by U.S. intelligence officials who released it last week — may be a forgery, according to Washington analysts who cite numerous anomalies in the text.

Some analysts have gone so far as to label the letter a likely U.S. government “influence operation,” which, if exposed, threatens American credibility in the Middle East.

“If this is a forgery, then either it was designed to blow up in the face of the American government; or someone in the ‘coalition of the willing’ has been caught with their pants down,” said one analyst, who spoke with Cybercast News Service on the condition of anonymity. CNS News