Shock: Zarqawi read the Guardian regularly

posted at 3:10 pm on June 9, 2006 by Allahpundit
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He considered it and the Daily Telegraph to be “very authoritative,” reports … the Daily Telegraph.

So, kudos to both.

To help wrap up our Zarko coverage for the week, I commend to you the NYT’s assessment of his role in pioneering the virtual jihad. “[T]he Alexander Graham Bell of terrorist propaganda,” Evan Kohlmann calls him, but what he really is is the world’s most successful vlogger. Indeed, his Internet communiques allegedly helped inspire the would-be jihadis who were thwarted last weekend in Toronto.

It’s a small world after all, says the Jerusalem Post:

[A] Hamas statement later mourned Zarqawi as a “brother fighter… who was martyred at the hands of the savage crusade campaign which targets the Arab homeland, starting in Iraq.”

This is a new development, one that may relate to reports of an increasing al-Qaida presence in Egypt’s Sinai and in the Gaza Strip. It is also fits with the efforts of Hizbullah, which is heavily influenced by Iran, to piggyback on Palestinian attacks against Israel.

We are, in other words, witnessing the seamlessness of jihad. Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran and al-Qaida come from different sides of the Sunni-Shi’ite divide, but they agree on the need to wage jihad against the West, particularly Israel and the US. The death of Zarqawi saddens all of them, just as it is cause for encouragement for free peoples everywhere.

To people like Mahmoud Zahar, Hizbullah’s Hassan Nasrallah, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and al-Qaida’s Osama bin Laden, it is obvious that all the branches of jihad are connected, and that the successes of one are cause for celebration for the others.

None of this is surprising. What is strange is that the West often seems to lack both recognition of the connections among its enemies and of the need to show similar solidarity itself.

Elsewhere, for your reading pleasure: ABC News profiles Task Force 145, a unit of which our friend Sullivan would, it’s safe to say, not approve; the Baltimore Sun denounces the “inappropriate glee” with which some news sources trumpeted the reports of the Zarqawi’s death, most notably by criticizing CNN for advertising the airstrike video on its website when the same video is available right there in the Sun’s own sidebar; and Goldstein tries to interview the Z-man only to discover that he’s the strong, silent type.

Update: Actually, don’t miss this either. Hah.

Update: Ace is slamming ABC News (and then un-slamming them) for posting the name of the informant. But the Washington Post also published it, as I noted this morning. What sense does it make in the age of Google to crucify one news source for leaking info that another major news source has already published? Either the entire media embargoes it or no one does.

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