THE ENEMY OF OUR ENEMY IS ...

I suspect a lot of right-wingers will pick up on this BBC story, which notes that many Arab broadcasters have ignored the new bin Laden tape, as well as recent tapes by Zawahiri and Zarqawi, and that other Arab media outlets have recently been quite critical of al-Qaeda.

Those right-wingers, however, will probably skip this part:

One columnist, Nahid Hattar, in the Jordanian paper, al-Arab al-Yawm, portrayed the al-Qaeda number two as a parasite.

"American imperialism in Iraq is certainly on the verge of defeat," the columnist said.

"But the credit for that goes to the sacrifice of the Iraqi people... It will never go to al-Qaeda under the leadership of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, who appeared in his televised message to be thirsty, like a leech, for the blood of Iraqis, as well as haughty, stupid and lacking any connection to reality, just like George Bush junior." ...

In Egypt, a commentary in al-Akhbar said that the "continued threats" by "al-Zawahiri and the other leaders of terrorism is in the end providing an acceptable justification" for the Americans to "occupy Iraq, Afghanistan and other places".

Little if any of this criticism is directed at what's widely seen in the Arab and Muslim world as a legitimate resistance movement in Iraq, but is instead aimed at al-Qaeda for trying to take credit for it....

The enemy of our enemy is our enemy.