Free Republic

Ayman al-Zawahiri Says Al Qaeda Wants to Spill More U.S. Blood Before America Leaves In a new video posted today on the Internet, al Qaeda's number two man, Ayman al Zawahiri, mocks the bill passed by Congress setting a timetable for the pullout of U.S. troops in Iraq. "This bill will deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap," Zawahiri says in answer to a question posed to him an interviewer. Continuing in the same tone, Zawahiri says, "We ask Allah that they only get out of it after losing...

***************************************** As the Sharm al-Shaykh conference wrapped up, the big stories all seem to focus on who Sec. Rice would talk to in Egypt, and what that might mean for US diplomatic strategy. Back home, the Post runs a front-pager writing that the Iraq war -- the issue that delivered the Congress to the Democrats in November -- is distracting from their domestic agenda. From Tikrit, Joshua Partlow reports in the Post that Iraq and the US have asked Syria to exert more control over its 375-mile desert border with Iraq, to block the influx of foreign fighters in the...