October 21, 2004

Jewish skullcaps adorned with a campaign slogan for President George W. Bush are displayed in a store window in Jerusalem's Mea Shearim neighborhood October 21, 2004. Split over the presidential race, most Israelis support Bush while Palestinians back his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry.

Israelis, Palestinians at Odds Over U.S. Election

If Israeli settler Rachel Saperstein could decide the outcome of the U.S. election, President Bush would beat Democratic challenger John Kerry by a landslide.

But Gaza shopkeeper Abu Gomaa hopes instead to see Bush's re-election bid go down in flames on Nov. 2. "I want to laugh ... at his humiliation," he says.
[Abu means he'd like to laugh the way he and his fellow Muslims laughed and celebrated in the Paleostinian areas on 9/11 at our "humiliation" at the hands of Al Queda.--Jen]

Locked in a bloody conflict dragging into its fifth year,
[Al-Reuters won't admit it, but the Intifada is really over and the Paleos lost!]
Israelis and Palestinians both have a big stake in who governs in Washington and holds sway in Middle East diplomacy.

Yet rarely have they been more sharply divided over an American presidential race. "In this land of irreconcilable differences between Arabs and Jews, you can add one more thing they can't agree on," a U.S. diplomat said.

Opinion polls show that Israelis stand alone internationally in their rock-solid support for Bush, considering him the best ally the Jewish state has ever had in the White House.
[That's right, my Israeli friends--God has been blessing us all with George Bush's presidency!]

Leaving little doubt that this sentiment reaches to the very top, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon even managed to forget Kerry's name briefly during a recent newspaper interview.
[Too funny!
sKerry's such a tool and Ariel Sharon is a very smart man who's taken JFK's measure and found him wanting.--Jen]

On the other side of the divide, Palestinians who once had high hopes for Bush now bitterly oppose him.
[This is Al-Reuters/Muslim speak for this: "Paleostinians once had high hopes that Bush would be as big an idiot as Bill Clinton and do what they, and especially their leader Arafat, wanted."
Araf*rt's now officially weighed in for Kerry, in hopes that he'll take the Paleo-Israeli situation back to the "Sept. 10"/Clinton state of affairs and that a "President Kerry" will have sheets put on that bed in the White House guest room so that Yasser can come "home."
Given what a craven coward and thug-lover I think Kerry is, this is probably a safe bet on Arafat's part.--Jen ]

Their hostility has been fed by Bush's perceived green light for Israel's military crackdown in the Palestinian territories, his diplomatic isolation of their leader Yasser Arafat and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Despite that, Palestinians only cautiously prefer Kerry. They hope he will take a more even-handed approach but see him as unlikely to seriously rethink America's Middle East policy.

For his part, Kerry has taken pains to reassure American Jewish voters that he would be as pro-Israel as Bush, even sending his brother, a convert to Judaism, as an emissary to ease any Israeli concerns.
[Don't let it escape your attention that Kerry doesn't have the b*lls to go to Israel himself nor has he had the guts to go to Iraq in the past 18 months either!--J.T.]

HOLDING THE UMBRELLA

In Israel, where attitudes have been hardened by a campaign of Palestinian suicide bombings and other attacks, Bush's "war on terror" has won an enthusiastic following.

While polls show much of the world hostile to Bush and his Iraq policies, Israelis back him by a ratio of two to one -- a sign of gratitude for neutralising their strongest Arab foe.

"Israel loves the president because he holds the umbrella that protects it from its enemies," wrote Shmuel Rosner, a columnist for the Haaretz newspaper.

Living in the heavily fortified Jewish settlement bloc of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip, Saperstein regards Bush as a hero.

"Who else could keep a terrorist like Arafat in isolation and throw Saddam Hussein in jail?" the 63-year-old grandmother said. "Bush wants Israel to be safe from Muslim terror."
[President Bush wants the world to be safe from Muslim terror!]

Though astonished at Bush's endorsement of Sharon's plan to evacuate Gaza settlements next year, she fears a Kerry administration would push for a handover of even more of the occupied land that she sees as Israel's by biblical birthright.
[Leave it to Rooters to put a lower case "b" for Biblical!
Not only was that land given to the Hebrews thousands of years ago by God according to His Word, but the Israelis won it (back) by military action in the 20th Century.]

Palestinians are not so much enamoured of Kerry as embittered by what they see as Bush's pro-Israel bias.

They are furious with him for agreeing that Israel should be allowed to retain large swathes of the West Bank and bar the return of refugees under any future peace deal.

As the presidential race tightens, many hope to see Bush humbled on election day. "I want to see him bow his head in defeat and lower his arrogant tone," said Gomaa, 40, as he attended customers in his electronics shop in Gaza City.
[God willing, that's a sight you'll never see, Hadji!]

But few Palestinians believe Kerry would take a more active peacemaking role than Bush, who backed away after seeing his "road map" peace plan shredded by violence.
[The President basically put the ball in Arafat's court and stated that the Paleos could have an indepedent state if they'd eschew terror, but Yasser purposefully kept using terror attacks.
So any blame goes on Arafat and not on Bush.]

Like Bush, Kerry has made scant mention of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in speeches and debates except to vow that he will safeguard Israel's security.

"They are competing to win the affection of the Zionist entity," said Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, an Islamic militant group sworn to Israel's destruction. For the Palestinians, he says, "either of them is a losing choice."

IMHO, President Bush deserves re-election for his Israeli policy alone--ever since his Rose Garden speech on March 24, 2002, he completely changed the dynamics of the Israel-"Palestinian" "conflict" by thinking outside the box, refusing to use the moral equivalence and stinking thinking that has suffused the situation for almost 60 years and had kept it a "quagmire" without end or solution.
Israel is now able to deal with the Paleos for the IslamoNazi mass murderers that they are, whereas Presidents like Clinton and Carter treated them as justifiably outraged "freedom fighters."
We don't talk about the "cycle of violence" anymore and the "peace process" and I'm tickled pink about it!
I never thought there'd be a solution to this in my lifetime and now the possibility of a real peace in Jerusalem is actually becoming real.
If the Paleos really wanted a state, they'd adopt the Quartet's road map to an independent state by giving up Islamist terrorism and embracing democratic elections of their leaders and the rule of law, but no.... they just can't!
And their goal remains the murder of every Jew and the eradication of the state of Israel, which is why their people continue to dub it the "Zionist entity."
President Bush had read his Bible and he knows that God said, "He who blesses Israel, I will bless and he who curses Israel, I will curse."
With Bush as President, we're doing not only the theologically and morally right thing by backing Israel, but in geopolitical terms, we're acknowledging that it's land that they've fought for and won more than once and they're the only democratic island in a sea of Arab Islamic tyranny (something we're changing right now in Iraq, with reforms possibly underway in Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Jordan with our Liberty on the March!).
Check out how entrenched Dimocrat and presidential candidate Sen. Joe Lieberman praised President Bush to a group of Jewish Democrat voters in PALM BEACH, FLORIDA!
Lieberman Praises Bush, Chides Kerry

Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman took the unusual step of praising President Bush while chiding John Kerry during a campaign stop in Florida Wednesday.

Lieberman, with just three weeks left before the election, praised Bush strongly for his support of Israel, America’s lone democratic ally in the Mid-East.

"We are dealing with a president who's had a record of strong, consistent support for Israel. You can't say otherwise,” Lieberman told an audience of 600 near Delray Beach, Fla, the Palm Beach Post reported in editions Thursday.

Lieberman also added that any criticism of Bush vis-à-vis Israel would be “unjustified.”

Lord love Joe--if it weren't so late in the game, he'd probably do a "Zell," but he sold out too much when he ran as Algore's running mate and he's in too deep with the DNC.
God will continue to bless us as we stand by His Chosen People in Israel.
I'm proud that President Bush has made this stand and that he recognized fully that with the 9/11 attacks, Israel's fight become our fight.
Together, we will see victory, peace and freedom reign in the Middle East.

Britain Agrees to U.S. Troops Request

Prime Minister Tony Blair's government agreed Thursday to meet a U.S. request and redeploy a battalion of 850 British troops into volatile central Iraq, despite strong opposition from lawmakers.
[Well, apparently the opposition from the Liberal Left wasn't "strong" enough, because Tony won!
Hurray!--Jen]
[...]
An armored battlegroup of 850 soldiers from the First Battalion Black Watch - complete with medics, signalers and engineers - will be redeployed for a "limited and specific period of time, lasting weeks rather than months" to relieve U.S. troops, [Defense Sec. Geoff] Hoon said.
[The plan, I think, is to free up some of our soldiers in the same area so that they can be moved to Fallujah, where they may make the "big push" to decisively take the town and soon.--J.T.]

The troops will deploy in "Multinational Force West" - an area to the west of Baghdad where Sunni insurgents have been carrying out daily attacks on U.S. troops and Iraqis - Hoon said.

[...]..."This deployment is a vital part of the process of creating the right conditions for the Iraqi elections to take place in January."
[...]
But some lawmakers are deeply suspicious it is a political gesture to provide cover for President Bush in the closing days of the U.S. presidential race. Bush has faced repeated accusations from Democratic nominee John Kerry that America is going it alone in Iraq. Some suggest the redeployment would [allow] him [Bush] to reassure voters that U.S. troops were not alone in Iraq's most volatile areas.

Can you believe it...that our politics have leaked this pervasively even into the UK?
This election is like no other, isn't it?
Thank God that the British Left is just as whiny and obnoxious and, in the end, ineffectual and powerless as our Democrats!
Britain, once again, is proving to be a terrific ally and we're grateful for the "special relationship" and for their friendship and cooperation!

October 20, 2004

War of Words

President Bush and Senator John Kerry have very different views of the war on terrorism, and those differences ought to be debated in this presidential campaign. But the debate should focus on facts, not distortions of history.

On more than one occasion, Senator Kerry has referred to the fight at Tora Bora in Afghanistan during late 2001 as a missed opportunity for America. He claims that our forces had Osama bin Laden cornered and allowed him to escape. How did it happen? According to Mr. Kerry, we "outsourced" the job to Afghan warlords. As commander of the allied forces in the Middle East, I was responsible for the operation at Tora Bora, and I can tell you that the senator's understanding of events doesn't square with reality.

First, take Mr. Kerry's contention that we "had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden" and that "we had him surrounded." We don't know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001. Some intelligence sources said he was; others indicated he was in Pakistan at the time; still others suggested he was in Kashmir. Tora Bora was teeming with Taliban and Qaeda operatives, many of whom were killed or captured, but Mr. bin Laden was never within our grasp.

Second, we did not "outsource" military action.
[I knew that you didn't, Gen. Franks, it's just that Kerry thinks it makes such a great sound byte, particularly when you can use his favorite new buzzword, "outsourcing!"--Jen]
We did rely heavily on Afghans because they knew Tora Bora, a mountainous, geographically difficult region on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is where Afghan mujahedeen holed up for years, keeping alive their resistance to the Soviet Union. Killing and capturing Taliban and Qaeda fighters was best done by the Afghan fighters who already knew the caves and tunnels.

Third, the Afghans weren't left to do the job alone. Special forces from the United States and several other countries were there, providing tactical leadership and calling in air strikes. Pakistani troops also provided significant help - as many as 100,000 sealed the border and rounded up hundreds of Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Contrary to Senator Kerry, President Bush never "took his eye off the ball" when it came to Osama bin Laden. The war on terrorism has a global focus. It cannot be divided into separate and unrelated wars, one in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. Both are part of the same effort to capture and kill terrorists before they are able to strike America again, potentially with weapons of mass destruction. Terrorist cells are operating in some 60 countries, and the United States, in coordination with dozens of allies, is waging this war on many fronts.

As we planned for potential military action in Iraq and conducted counterterrorist operations in several other countries in the region, Afghanistan remained a center of focus. Neither attention nor manpower was diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq. When we started Operation Iraqi Freedom we had about 9,500 troops in Afghanistan, and by the time we finished major combat operations in Iraq last May we had more than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan.

We are committed to winning this war on all fronts, and we are making impressive gains. Afghanistan has held the first free elections in its history. Iraq is led by a free government made up of its own citizens. By the end of this year, NATO and American forces will have trained 125,000 Iraqis to enforce the law, fight insurgents and secure the borders. This is in addition to the great humanitarian progress already achieved in Iraq.

Many hurdles remain, of course. But the gravest danger would result from the withdrawal of American troops before we finish our work. Today we are asking our servicemen and women to do more, in more places, than we have in decades. They deserve honest, consistent, no-spin leadership that respects them, their families and their sacrifices. The war against terrorism is the right war at the right time for the right reasons. And Iraq is one of the places that war must be fought and won. George W. Bush has his eye on that ball and Senator John Kerry does not.

Yes, sir!
And that's telling 'em, Tommy!
I know I live in interesting times when a plain-spoken soldier from Oklahoma (and one of our greatest generals) gets an op-ed in the NYTimes!
But Gen. Franks knows that Kerry needs to be put on the straight and narrow path of Truth in a public forum and this he is happy to do for his President and his country.
I like to think that we got OBL at Tora Bora in late 2001... and maybe we did.
I just know that there was very little "outsourcing" done in those opening Afghan battles (up to the present), because there's not a red-blooded American soldier that doesn't want a piece of Osama!
"Outsourcing" was needed when the man who planned the mass murder of 3,000 of our civilians was "wanted dead or alive?"
Kerry, you slept while the Clue Train passed through your town!

October 19, 2004

Democratic debate bursting out all over Iraq's university campuses

Within the relatively safe confines of Baghdad's university campuses, a picture emerges of what democracy could look like throughout the country if worries about security hadn't trumped everything else.

It's not pretty. Indeed, it's messy, uneven and at times angry. Students and professors alike are still learning what democracy is and debating how to execute it on campuses - or whether universities are ready for such debates at all.
[Democracy has always been a messy process! What's worrying is that the Left in this country has taken over the dialogue in our schools and universities so imperiously, that Iraqi universities may be more open to discussing both sides of the political spectrum--Left, Right and in-between--than American ones.
If you support Conservative and/or Republican values or you're going to vote for Bush, life on our campuses can be very difficult for you indeed.
Even President Bush's own daughter Barbara admitted she'd had a tough time standing up for her father at Yale!
We could definitely learn a lesson from these "babies in Liberty!"]
[...]

Politics has become so pervasive that the Higher Education Ministry has posted signs on all campuses that tell students their rights. Among them: "The freedom of opinion expression is a guaranteed right to the entire academic society, under the rule that this does not interfere with a student's education."
[...]
There are 20 public universities in Iraq, and the four in Baghdad have more than 70,000 students combined. During Saddam's regime, there was only one political party on campuses - his Baath Party. His regime made decisions about university life. Students were forbidden from expressing themselves.
[...as was everyone else, too!--Jen]

There were no courses on democracy; instead, there were required Iraqi nationalism courses. Those have been replaced by courses on democratic governments and human rights. Some campuses have even developed departments dedicated to such topics.
[...]
"When the change
[Let's hope he means the liberation of Iraq!--J.T.]
happened, Iraq was like a big prison cell that suddenly opened, and people were finally free and able to express themselves," al Abadi said.

Isn't this what Freedom is all about?
We continue to discuss these issues over here in our democratic republic--racial quotas for university admission, tolerance for GOP, Bush, Christian and gay groups on campus, separate graduations for Hispanics, etc., etc.
Liberty is a work in progress for any nation which embraces it and having a say, expressing your opinion and using your voice and your vote are what it's all about!
Isn't it great to see these young people "getting it" and using it?!
They'll make some missteps--as we Americans do and have done--but they sound as if they're fully involved in securing a free, democratic Iraq.
Who can doubt that this is worlds better than their lives before, where they were living in fear under the shadow of murder, torture and enforced silence and subjection under Saddam?
As for the newly free Iraq being more democratic than the USA, which has had a 228-year head start on Iraq and Afghanistan, there are aspects of democracy and civil rights that have to be relearned, reworked and retried.
Hence, we have phenomena in our history such as the Civil War, the Dred Scott decision and the Civil Rights Act, all events in the history of racial equality that we didn't get right at all.
And America will continue to make these mistakes.
As will Iraq and Afghanistan, too.
We can only wish for such "problems" in a democratic Iran and Syria and Saudi Arabia.
The important thing is that the government is still "of, by and for the people" and not by the whimsy and psychosis of a madman like Saddam or a group of tyrannical madmen who hold absolute power, as with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Seeing things like this happen in a new democracy, I don't doubt the rightness of President Bush's strong belief that Liberty is God's gift to the world, including the Muslim world, and that all peoples yearn to breathe free and to have their individual voice be heard wherever they are and no matter whether that voice be in English, Arabic, Pashtun or Tagalog!
Let messy, sometimes angry, sometimes too loud Freedom reign!

October 18, 2004

The Lowest Blow

The memoir about the Kerry-Edwards campaign that will be the best seller will reveal the debate rehearsal aimed at focusing national attention on the fact that Vice President Cheney has a daughter who is a lesbian.

That this twice-delivered low blow was deliberate is indisputable. The first shot was taken by John Edwards, seizing a moderator's opening to smarmily compliment the Cheneys for loving their openly gay daughter, Mary. The vice president thanked him and yielded the remaining 80 seconds of his time; obviously it was not a diversion he was willing to prolong.
[Duh. VP Cheney made it pretty clear that it wasn't to be discussed or brought up again and she's his daughter!--Jen]

Until that moment, only political junkies knew that a member of the Cheney family serving on the campaign staff was homosexual. The vice president, to show it was no secret or anything his family was ashamed of, had referred to it briefly twice this year, but the press - respecting family privacy - had properly not made it a big deal. The percentage of voters aware of Mary Cheney's sexual orientation was tiny.

But Edwards's answer in the vice-presidential debate raised that percentage. Because Cheney refused to react and the media did not see the spotlight on lesbianism as part of a political plan, the opening shot worked.

Emboldened, members of Kerry's debate preparation team made Mary Cheney's private life the centerpiece of their answer to the question, especially worrisome to them, about same-sex marriage. Kerry was prepped to insert her sexuality into his rehearsed answer: "If you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian. ..."

But in this second time around, the gratuitous insertion of Cheney's daughter into an answer slipping around a hot-button social issue revealed that it was part of a deliberate Kerry campaign strategy.
[Ah, sKerry...refining the Clintons' Politics of Personal Destruction down to a new low!
I completely agree with Safire that it was deliberate on Kerry's part as it was about the most purposeful statement Kerry made all night!--Jen]

One purpose was to drive a wedge between the Republican running mates. President Bush supports a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to a union of a man and a woman; Cheney has long been on record favoring state option, but always adds that the president sets administration policy. That rare divergence of views is hardly embarrassing.
[I'm not so very sure that Bush and Cheney even diverge on this issue: President Bush made it clear that a Constitutional Amendment was necessary because Liberal judges who legislate from the bench were changing the decisions of the 50 states not to have same-sex marriage. In the cases of California and Louisiana, they've overruled state referendums banning same-sex marriage, directly contravening the will of the electorate. Cheney should note this publicly, too.--Jen]

The sleazier purpose of the Kerry-Edwards spotlight on Mary Cheney is to confuse and dismay Bush supporters who believe that same-sex marriage is wrong, to suggest that Bush is as "soft on same-sex" as Kerry is, and thereby to reduce a Bush core constituency's eagerness to go to the polls.

The pro-Kerry columnist Margaret Carlson put her finger on it, finding that Kerry and Edwards "realize that discussing Mary Cheney is a no-lose proposition: It highlights the hypocrisy of the Bush-Cheney position to Democrats while simultaneously alerting evangelicals to the fact that the Cheneys have an actual gay person in their household whom they apparently aren't trying to convert or cure."
[I think that the "hypocrisy" hit was the main point of Kerry's remark, but if the news that the Cheneys have a gay daughter shocks Conservative Christians out of voting for Bush, I'm sure the Dems wouldn't mind that either.]

After the outspoken Lynne Cheney blasted this unsought intrusion of her daughter's private life as "a cheap and tawdry trick," the Kerry campaign hustled forward John Edwards's wife to charge that such motherly outrage "indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter's sexual preferences."

Worse than insensitive, that shot was off message, peeling the veneer off the Kerry-Edwards justification for making Mary famous: their oleaginous claim that, gee, they were only complimenting Dick Cheney for his fatherly tolerance. The crusher to that pretense came when the Kerry campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, coolly announced that the Cheney daughter was "fair game."
[This revealed the Kerry campaign as beyond cruel and ruthless, but then that's what I've come to expect from them.
Speaking of shame, they are, as always, shameless!]

Apparently the American public thinks otherwise about the campaigning children of candidates. When polls showed two-to-one disapproval of the calculated Kerry-Edwards abuse of the young woman's privacy, the Democratic strategists who concocted this base-suppressing dirty trick orchestrated a defense that it was Dick Cheney who "outed" his daughter months ago. They are advising Kerry that he would look weak or, worse, slyly manipulative were he to apologize for tagging the Cheneys with the word "lesbian" before 50 million viewers.

Kerry will, I hope, assert his essential decency by apologizing with sincerity. Other Republicans hope he will let his self-inflicted wound fester. They have in mind a TV spot using an old film clip of a Boston lawyer named Welch at a Congressional hearing, saying "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

William Safire and I are as one on this.
I, too, thought of the above query to Sen. McCarthy in the HUAC hearings in regards to the "outing" of Mary Cheney, which is more than ironic as the Dems are always accusing Right Wing Nuts like me of "McCarthyism."
Kerry's remark about Mary Cheney was OUTRAGEOUS--a complete invasion of her personal privacy!
Unless you are someone who wants to or is about to have sexual relations with Ms. Cheney, there is no reason to talk about her sexual preference and certainly no reason to discuss it--without her permission--on live TV in front of 40 million people!
Not all homosexuals are for "same-sex marriage;" in fact, I'm convinced that it's just the gay activists who are pushing for it.
It's my belief that homosexual citizens have pretty much the same civil rights as the rest of us and aren't being deprived of a thing right this minute, without any government stamp of approval on their "marriages."
That being said, Mary Cheney hasn't publicly endorsed same-sex marriage, to the best of my knowledge so why bring her up when the issue is under debate?
Ms. Cheney isn't running for office, either.
Her only "misfortune" is that she happens to be the Cheneys' daughter and for whatever reasons, is homosexual.
"Outing her" was a malicious, evil and purposefully hurtful thing for Kerry to say and if it costs him the election, good!
If Kerry could target Dick Cheney's daughter for her alternative lifestyle, which one of us will be the object of the next group hate for our PC crimes under a "President Kerry?"
I shudder to think.
As Lynn Cheney said about Kerry, "This is not a good man."
No, ma'am. He is not.
Buzz on the street is that Kerry's own sister Diana is a lesbian, also--Remember her?
I believe that this is the same one who tried to bring about a loss for John Howard in Australia by trash-talking Bush and Iraqi Coalition stalwarts like Howard.
That election didn't turn out too well for the Kerrys and God willing, this one won't either!
If Kerry really cared about the issue and putting a face on it, wouldn't he have kept it en famille?

Zarqawi Movement Vows al-Qaida Allegiance

The militant group led by terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed to be behind many deadly attacks in Iraq, has declared its allegiance to Osama bin Laden, citing the need for unity against "the enemies of Islam."
[Dare we hope that this means the "insurgents" aren't doing so hot in Iraq? I think so!--Jen]
[...]
The statement ran a Quranic verse encouraging Muslim unity and said al-Zarqawi considered bin Laden "the best leader for Islam's armies against all infidels and apostates."
[This includes just about everyone on the planet that isn't a Sunni Waahab!]

The Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi is suspected of about a dozen high-profile attacks in Iraq, including last year's bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, and the beheading of numerous foreign hostages.

His relationship to bin Laden and the al-Qaida leadership has long been the subject of considerable speculation. Although many experts believe al-Zarqawi had longtime ties to al-Qaida, others suspected that al-Zarqawi considered himself a rival to bin Laden for the mantle of chief defender of the Muslim faith.
[Hmmm...
Are we talking rivals for the title of Kalipha?
I hadn't heard this theory about Zarqawi before.
Must be a Muslim "thang."
I thought that Zarqawi has been on Osama's team all along, but according to the Baghdad Broadcasting System, that's an American "thang:"

[...]
The next stop on his [Zarqawi's] itinerary was his old stamping ground - Afghanistan.

He is believed to have set up a training camp in the western city of Herat, near the border with Iran.

Students at his camp supposedly became experts in the manufacture and use of poison gases.

It is during this period that Zarqawi is thought to have renewed his acquaintance with al-Qaeda.

He is believed to have fled to Iraq in 2001 after losing a leg in a US missile strike on his Afghan base.

US officials argue that it was at al-Qaeda's behest that he moved to Iraq and established links with Ansar al-Islam - a group of Kurdish Islamists from the north of the country.]

The Bush administration said it was still trying to confirm the report.

"But we've always said there were ties between Zarqawi and al-Qaida, which underscores once again why Iraq is the central front in the war on terror," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said in Washington. "It's also proof positive of why the president's firm resolve to fight terrorists overseas so we don't face them in America's neighborhoods is the only clear way to prevail."
[This will definitely put the "no links between Iraq and AQ" folks on the Left, especially the Dems, on the sidelines, although I expect them to say that it was U.S. military action in Iraq that "drove" Zarqawi to join with OBL.
Don't believe a word of it!--J.T.]

The statement affirmed the "allegiance of Tawhid and Jihad's leadership and soldiers to the chief of all fighters, Osama bin Laden." It said the announcement had been timed for the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan when "Muslims need more than ever to stick together in the face of the religion's enemies."
[...]
Al-Zarqawi also was indicted in absentia Sunday in his native Jordan along with 12 other alleged Muslim militants on charges of plotting a chemical attack that could have killed thousands of people.
[Surely those weren't chemicals from Saddam's stockpile?!]
[...]
It appeared the announcement was aimed at enabling al-Zarqawi, who has a background as a common criminal, to profit from bin Laden's stature among radical Muslims.

Bin Laden, believed to be hiding in Afghanistan or in the border areas of Pakistan,
[There are also rumors that he's being kept safe in Iran and other people say he's in China.]
has faded somewhat from public view and recent declarations by al-Qaida's leadership have been made by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.

My fervent hope is that Zarqawi isn't vowing allegiance to OBL because there's going to be another big attack--either here in the U.S. or in Iraq, for which they want Osama and AQ to get the ultimate credit.
As much as Zarqawi's group have stepped up attacks for the start of Ramadan, they're also keeping an eye on our elections, and hoping for another Madrid situation, i.e. AQ stages a huge attack before the election, Bush is blamed and largely because of that, Kerry is elected.
Very scary stuff indeed.
I can't wait until the election's over--not only am I ready to re-elect President Bush, but I'm so sick of Kerry and Edwards, and then worrying about another terror attack on top of this very nasty election (at least on the part of the Democrats) is just too much!
Needless to say, I'm praying a lot these days and nights.
Join me!