Al Qaeda Views Iraq as Central Front of War on Terror

Former Congressman Lee Hamilton of the 9/11 Commission recently said that we are engaged in three wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the War on Terror. President George W. Bush maintains that Iraq is part of the War on Terror. What’s Al Qieda think?
See Al-Qaida No. 2 Urges Attacks on Oil Plants by Maggie Michael in the Los Angeles Times today December 7, 2005 which includes comments made in a recently released video from Al Qaeda 2nd in command Ayman al-Zawahri.

al-Zawahri agrees with Bush:
- “urged insurgent groups in Iraq to unite to drive out American forces”
- “Iraqi Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen, ‘whose hands were not tainted by Americans,’ should come together to fill ‘the gap that will be left by the Americans departure’ from Iraq”

See President Bush’s National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, Nov. 2005
Victory in Iraq is a Vital U.S. Interest
• Iraq is the central front in the global war on terror. Failure in Iraq will embolden terrorists and
expand their reach; success in Iraq will deal them a decisive and crippling blow.
• The fate of the greater Middle East – which will have a profound and lasting impact on American
security – hangs in the balance.
• The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. And we must
recognize Iraq as the central front in our war on terror.
- Osama Bin Laden has declared that the “third world war…is raging” in Iraq, and it will
end there, in “either victory and glory, or misery and humiliation.”
- Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri has declared Iraq to be “the place for the greatest
battle,” where he hopes to “expel the Americans” and then spread “the jihad wave to the
secular countries neighboring Iraq.”
- Al Qaida in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has openly declared that “we fight
today in Iraq, and tomorrow in the Land of the Two Holy Places, and after there the
west.”