Al Qaeda Gloats Over US Election

Al Qaeda in Iraq mocked President Bush as a coward whose conduct of the war was rejected at the polls, and challenged him to keep U.S. troops in the country to face more bloodshed:

"We haven't had enough of your blood yet," taunted terror chieftain Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, identified as the speaker.

He gloated over Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation, said he has 12,000 fighters who "have vowed to die for God's sake" and said his fighters will not rest until they blow up the White House and occupy Jerusalem.

[. . .]

Al-Muhajer praised the American people for handing victory to the Democrats, saying: "They voted for something reasonable in the last elections.

"We call on the lame duck not to hurry his escape the way the defense secretary did," al-Muhajer said in reference to Rumsfeld's resignation as Pentagon chief Wednesday.

"Remain steadfast on the battlefield, you coward," said al-Muhajer, who took over leadership of Al Qaeda in Iraq after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in June.

At Counterterrorism Blog, Walid Phares posts that there is more to the tape than Al Qaeda's gloating. The message asks (American) politicians if they will implement their electoral promises to withdraw from Iraq. Muhajir committed 12,000 al Qaeda fighters to the Emir of al Qaeda in Iraq.

At The Fourth Rail, Bill Roggio calls the tape a victory speech and offers additional quotes from the tape:

The victory day has come faster than we expected... Here is the Islamic nation in Iraq victorious against the tyrant. The enemy is incapable of fighting on and has no choice but to run away.

Roggio writes that al-Qaeda works to influence elections in the West, and has a real preference in their outcome:

To influence the American elections, the U.S. mainland didn't need to be hit. The schwerpunkt of American public opinion was in Iraq. The terror attacks and sectarian killings were ratcheted up to achieve the desired effect: weaken the resolve of the American public, create a sense of hopelessness and despair in the mission.

Sadly, I think Roggio has it right.