.... The U.S. military has said that they have a confession from at least one ‘Islamic State of Iraq’ figure—identified as a senior leader in the ISI’s hierarchy—alleging that [Abu Omar] al-Baghdadi is a fictitious character invented by Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia to lend more of an indigenous Iraqi ‘identity’ to its leadership. … I tend to disagree with the assertion that al-Baghdadi doesn’t exist.
In the last two month period, Al-Baghdad has put out two new speeches: his fifth speech (43 minutes long) was entitled ‘Should you desist then that is better for you’ and was released on July 9, and his sixth speech was posted to jihadist website on September 15 under the title ‘They plot, but Allah also plots’ and lasts for 27 minutes. I am unaware of any other speeches during this time period.
A little over two months ago, al-Baghdadi threatened war against Iran, and last week he declared war on Sweden. But whatÂ’s interesting about his latest speech is that there was no mention of his prior threat against Iran: he had given the Iranians a two month grace period to pull their support for IraqÂ’s Shiites or else he would go after them and after Shiite business interests across the Middle East. But even though the two months were up, and Iran obviously had not cleared out of Iraq, al-Baghdadi doesnÂ’t bring up his previous tirade. Â…. Not only that but al-Baghdadi doesnÂ’t even address the American accusation that heÂ’s a fictitious character, which was made on July 18, nine days after he released his fifth speech. Â…. |