What Is This World Coming To?

An Internet posting purportedly by al-Qaida in Yemen says the group’s No. 2 is a Saudi national who is a former Guantanamo detainee.

The Yemeni group - known as “al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” - posted the statement this week on a militant Web site that regularly carries al-Qaida messages.

It says the man returned to his home in Saudi Arabia after his release from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba about a year ago and from there went to Yemen to join the terror group, where he currently ranks #2.

The reports said almost half the remaining detainees in Guantanamo were Yemenis and that efforts to repatriate them depended in part on the creation of a Yemeni rehabilitation program - partly financed by the US - similar to the Saudi one.

Saudi Arabia has previously claimed that no graduate of its program has returned to terrorism.

The Pentagon has said on at least two occasions - including earlier this month - that dozens of released Guantanamo detainees have “returned to the fight” but it has provided scant detail. A Saudi security official told the paper that Shihri had disappeared from his home in Saudi Arabia last year after finishing the rehabilitation program.

A Yemeni journalist who interviewed al-Qaeda’s leaders in Yemen last year, Abdulela Shaya, confirmed to the paper that the deputy leader was Shihri, the former Guantanamo detainee.

Shaya told the Times that Shihri had described to him his journey from Cuba to Yemen and had supplied his Guantanamo detention number, 372.

That is the correct number, Pentagon documents show.

Bad news for the Democrats. Even the Washington Post is admitting that al-Qaeda is losing its war against the United States:

Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda’s allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group’s core leadership.

While cautioning that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat, Hayden said Osama bin Laden is losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world and has largely forfeited his ability to exploit the Iraq war to recruit adherents.”

“Largely,” but not completely. Osama’s task is to convince his followers that the United States is an evil, Satanic entity that deserves to have destruction visited upon it as a matter of religious duty. So Osama can still use clips from Democratic candidates, or taped sermons by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, or a copy of Scott McClellan’s book to help him make his case to new recruits.

Perhaps that is one reason that terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman is skeptical: “al Qaeda’s obituary has been written far too often in the past few years for anyone to declare victory,” he told the WP. “I agree that there has been progress. But we’re indisputably up against a very resilient and implacable enemy.”

(It’s hard to be sure if the ‘resilient and implacable enemy’ Hoffman is speaking of here is Osama bin Laden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or Scott McClellan. All of them seem quite resilient to me.)

The WP wasn’t willing to concede the point, but it did quote Hayden saying we’re winning in Iraq without following up with a paragraph disputing the contention. Maybe its true, after all.

But don’t tell the Democrats. They’ll just produce a new list of “Reasons For Jihad” talking points. Better to just win the war and tell them later.