He had the gall to suggest today that the Democrats slow-bleeding us into withdrawal might be something Al Qaeda would approve of. Quote:

“I think if we were to do what Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Murtha are suggesting, all we will do is validate the Al Qaeda strategy,” the vice president told ABC News. “The Al Qaeda strategy is to break the will of the American people … try to persuade us to throw in the towel and come home, and then they win because we quit.”

In fact it’d be the Sadrists who’d win because we quit, but we needn’t quibble over details. The insinuation having been made that the left’s scary-smart redeployment plan might possibly, conceivably have adverse consequences that benefit terrorism (a charge leveled against the right by Murtha as recently as 10 days ago), Madam Speaker rushed to the phone to dial up the president. She says she couldn’t reach him, but I like to think he just didn’t take the call.

Here’s Zawahiri from his latest tape. The translation is Laura Mansfield’s:

As for the Democrats in America, I tell them:

The people chose you due to your opposition to Bush’s policy in Iraq, but it appears that you are marching with him to the same abyss, and it appears that you will take part with him in the defeat and certain failure, with God’s permission. And the American people shall discover that you are all one side of the same coin of tyranny, criminality and failure…

As I close my talk, I ask Allah to bless the lions of Iraq who broke America’s back and spoiled its plans, and are today confronting the Crusaders and their aides, the religion-traders and secularist collaborators of the Jews and callers to partisanship who deceive their Kurdish brothers by telling them that the Mujahideen are their Arab enemies. Allah suffices us against them and their slander. And I ask Allah to unite the Mujahideen – Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen – on the word of Tawheed and on Jihad in Allah’s path against their enemies, the Crusaders and Zionists. And I ask Him to bring together the hearts of the Mujahideen in Iraq on the heart of one man, lest they fail and their strength depart. And I ask Him to aid with His help and guidance the fledgling Islamic State of Iraq, and to guide its Mujahid Amir, Abu Umar al-Baghdadi (may Allah protect him), to what He loves and is pleased with, and to consolidate this state so that it unites all our Mujahid and Muslim brothers in Iraq and so that it sets up over Iraq of the Caliphate a Mujahid Islamic state which will proceed to liberate Jerusalem and take steps towards the reestablishment of the Caliphate state which the Crusaders and their helpers toppled.

She also knocked Cheney for spinning the British withdrawal as a positive development with a line I find almost inscrutable: “If it’s going so well, we’d like to withdraw our troops as well.” In the first place, she knows the situation in Basra isn’t what it is in Baghdad. In the second place, what conclusion naturally follows from what she said? Cheney’s whole point is that we can’t withdraw from Baghdad because it isn’t going well. And her point is that that’s true, it isn’t — but let’s withdraw anyway.

Here’s some gratuitous video of Blue Star Mom Deborah Johns from yesterday’s Neil Cavuto playing Cheney to Mother Sheehan’s Pelosi. She was on to plug the support-the-troops caravan being organized by Move America Forward and scheduled for next month.