Briar Patch

Looks like we have a new audition for the next opus in the Spiderman franchise. Or something.

A new video from al Qaeda No. 2 man Ayman al-Zawahiri addresses the issue of setting a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

The video introduces an interview with al-Zawahiri, and his words are translated into English, with subtitles superimposed throughout. It runs 1 hour, 7 minutes and 35 seconds and was posted Saturday on the Internet.

Although CNN could not independently confirm its authenticity, it was produced by the As-Sahab production company that has taken credit for other al Qaeda tapes.

I assume this is just an underground "production company", but it's passing strange how the article just tosses the name in, like you're supposed to think "Oh, As-Sahab. Those guys." As if their innovative use of improvised manifestos, coupled with their refusal to block scenes to preserve the spontaneity, and the now-expected extended handheld scene culminating in an extreme smash-cut on Zawahiri, have given them some sort of notoriety in the genre.

In one section of the video, an interviewer asks al-Zawahiri to comment on legislation that ties the funding of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

"This bill reflects American failure and frustration," says al-Zawahiri, second-in-command to Osama bin Laden. "However, this bill will deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap.

"We ask Allah that they only get out of it after losing 200 to 300 hundred thousand killed, in order that we give the spillers of blood in Washington and Europe an unforgettable lesson, which will motivate them to review their entire doctrinal and moral system which produced their historic criminal Crusader-Zionist entity," al-Zawahiri says.

Al-Zawahiri makes what appears to be a dig at the Baghdad security crackdown started in February -- Operation Enforcing the Law. He apparently is alluding to the failure of coalition forces to stop the suicide bomber who breached security in the Green Zone last month and detonated a bomb in the parliament cafeteria.

"And lest Bush worry, I congratulate him on the success of his security plan and I invite him on the occasion for a glass of juice -- but in the cafeteria of the Iraqi parliament!"

So, is Br'er Dickhead showing us his actual hand, or just trying to psych us out? Because the implication of what he's saying is that if we left, they wouldn't be able to do much about it. They'd simply go back to killing each other -- though, bear in mind, there was no sectarian violence to speak of under Saddam. Sunni and Shi'a were not engaging in mass revenge killings, day after sordid day.

Not that it makes much difference in the practical sense, and not that we should take the word of a man who at least tacitly endorses daily bloodbaths of civilians in marketplaces, but it should still be viewed in the overall context of our present political assumptions. The sheer repetition of "if we don't fight them there, we'll have to fight them here" and "if we leave, they'll follow us home", as if they were stray dogs, has rendered discussion practically moot. These assertions force debate toward attempting to either prove or disprove a negative, an unknowable factor, and that buys them enough time and enough political rope to kick the can just a few more Friedmans.

And then whatever the outcome, it will have been the Democrats' fault.