Juan Cole comments on the bin Laden tape

It appears that Bin Laden is so weak now that he is forced to play to his own base

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If Bin Laden had been politically clever, he would have phrased his message in the terms of Iraqi nationalism. By siding with the narrowest sliver of Sunni extremists, he denied himself any real impact. By adopting Zarqawi, who has killed many more Iraqis (especially Shiites) than he has Americans, he simply tarnishes his own image inside Iraq.

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It is a desperate, crackpot hope. The narrow, sectarian and politically unskilfull character of this speech is the most hopeful sign I have seen in some time that al-Qaeda is a doomed political force

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Juan Cole post

Okay, call me jaded and an America-hater if you must, but I haven't thought that al-Qaeda was ever truly a political force of any consequence. Where's the evidence? An attack on the WTC? It wasn't done all on their own. And even if you believe it was, where was the follow-up political gain? The increase in their power was, according to all evidence, created by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And even that has turned into what looks most like an Iraqi - not al-Qaeda - resistance. Bin Laden began as a puppet creation of the U.S., and has remained so. Al-Qaeda has never been more than a disperse terrorist organization. Even those groups who have come together under the umbrella of al-Qaeda appear to me to simply be capitalizing on the name recognition.

I am certainly not qualified to argue with Juan Cole. I'm just saying this is the way it looks to me.

There is one sentence in Cole's post that does nothing to dispell that niggling question of whether bin Laden was ever off the CIA payroll.

Bin Laden's intervention in Iraq was hamfisted and clumsy, and will benefit the United States and the Shiites enormously.

Bingo.

P.S. If playing to your own base is a sign of weakness, then what does that make the Bush administration?