Drudge is wetting himself over this. Justified? On the one hand, the only detail that makes it the slightest bit credible is the fact that one of the men spoke English. On the other hand, that’s no minor detail. Revisit this post from December describing a tip British intel had gotten about 18 suicide bombers operating inside the country which just so happened to coincide with a Newsweek story about “the English brothers,” an alleged team of 12 western jihadist recruits in Pakistan who’d been cultivated by AQ for a special mission. Mullah Dadullah, a.k.a. the Taliban Zarqawi, also claimed in his final video that he was planning attacks on the United States and Britain.

On the other other hand, my understanding is that the Taliban and AQ, while ideological allies, operate at very different levels of sophistication. If a plot against the west is being planned, it seems odd that the Taliban commander (Dadullah’s brother) would be officiating instead of some AQ capo. There’s also the matter of a minor detail that ABC mentions in the photo series that accompanies the story but conveniently omits in the body of the story itself: “After all of the speeches, there was a reception line, during which many of the recruits’ faces are shown, including this of a boy who appears to be as young as 10 or 12 years-old.”

Sounds like amateur hour to me. I think it’s a load of shinola.