Al-Qaida No. 2 Mocks American ‘Failure’

A new video of al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader released on Saturday mocks President Bush and U.S. legislation requiring the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, saying the bill would rob the group’s fighters of the chance to kill more Americans.

Osama bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahri derided the new U.S.-backed Baghdad security plan, recounting an April 12 suicide bombing in Baghdad’s heavily protected Green Zone when an attacker slipped through security and killed a Sunni legislator in the Iraqi parliament’s cafeteria. An al-Qaida-led amalgam of Sunni insurgents in Iraq claimed responsibility.

“And lest Bush worry, I congratulate him on the success of his security plan, and I invite him on the occasion for a glass of juice, but in the cafeteria of the Iraqi parliament in the middle of the Green Zone,” al-Zawahri said.

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“This bill will deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap,” al-Zawahri said, according to a transcript released by the monitoring group SITE. The bill is evidence of American “failure and frustration,” he added.

“We ask Allah that they (U.S. troops) only get out of it after losing 200,000 to 300,000 killed, in order that we give the spillers of blood in Washington and Europe an unforgettable lesson,” he said.

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Al-Zawahri encouraged minorities around the world to join the holy war, or jihad.

“Al-Qaida is not merely for the benefit of Muslims,” he said. “That’s why I want blacks in America, people of color, American Indians, Hispanics, and all the weak and oppressed in North and South America, in Africa and Asia, and all over the world.”

Al-Zawahri claimed al-Qaida fighters in Iraq were “nearing closer to victory over their enemy, despite this sectarian fighting” that has convulsed the country.

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