Al Qaeda Endorsed Bush, Not Kerry, in Post-Madrid Letter

CNN’s Bill Schneider has joined FOX News Channel host John Gibson, joined House Speaker Dennis Hastert's (R-IL), Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and even President Bush, himself, in declaring that al-Qaida "would very much like to defeat President Bush"

They are all making it up. Joe Conason in Salon comments that

Schneider didn't divulge how he knows that al-Qaida wants to defeat Bush. His expertise lies in the field of public opinion, not terrorist tactics, and he cited no poll that measured the preferences of Osama bin Laden's followers. To put it bluntly, the CNN analyst was talking out of his ass.

This assertion that al-Qaida wants Kerry isn't a hypothesis, an "estimate", or "guess." It is not even "a fantasy world of spin". It is a LIE. As I tell my children, a lie is when you know it is not true.

After the Madrid train bombing, an al-Qaida cell, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, issued a statement taking credit for the attack. In that letter the al-Qaida cell proclaimed

WE WANT BUSH TO WIN
The statement said it supported U.S. President George W. Bush in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry, as it was not possible to find a leader "more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom."
In comments addressed to Bush, the group said:
"Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilisation."
"Because of this we desire you (Bush) to be elected."

The group is named after a close Osama bin Laden aide killed in the war in Afghanistan. Now there is some question about whether Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades is actually the group responsible for the bombings themselves. There really is no proof one way or the other. A conservative think-tank called the Jamestown Foundation, funded by several conservative foundations, has a paper which says this, as does the pro-Israel think tank, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Matthew Levitt, senior terrorist expert at the WINEP in an article for the Baltimore Sun (3/14/04), ties Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, Zarqawi, the Madrid bombers and the authors of this letter altogether.

Osama bin Laden threatened to attack Spain and other countries cooperating with the United States in the war on terror in an audiotaped message released in October. Spain has been among Europe's most public and vocal partners with the United States in both the war on terror and the Iraq war.

Additionally, several key al-Qaida cells have been disrupted over the past 2 1/2 years, including a Madrid cell headed by Muhammed Galeb Kalaje Zouaydi that funded the Sept. 11, 2001, plotters in Hamburg, Germany, and conducted the pre-operational surveillance of the World Trade Center and other potential targets in 1999.

Another disrupted cell was connected to the now infamous Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his network of poison plotters in Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Spain. Interestingly, that network is tied to at least two other attacks claimed - like the Madrid attacks - under the name of the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades in Istanbul and Baghdad. The group is affiliated with al-Qaida.

Could it be any clearer? The terrorists want Bush to win.