Bhutto killed because she was a woman

I was accused of simplistic analysis when I stated that I expected Bhutto to be killed because she was a woman. Well, it appears I'm not the only one who understands this:

ARE women across the world mourning Benazir Bhutto? They should be. Not because she was a saint; she wasn’t. She was at least a beneficiary of the billions stolen by her husband from the people of Pakistan. Nor did she do anything much for Pakistani women during her two periods of leadership, declining even to try to repeal the infamous Hudood laws whereby rape victims can be punished for adultery.

She should be mourned not because of what she was but because of what she symbolised. Her death was a political assassination, not an honour killing, as some have said.

Nevertheless it was a reminder of what we face. Bhutto was murdered because to her enemies she was Westernised, a traitor to her culture and an American stooge. She was murdered because she had vowed to bring secularism and democracy to Pakistan. She was murdered because she was all these things, and a woman.

“I know I am a symbol of what the so-called jihadists, Taliban and al-Qa’ida, most fear,” she wrote in her autobiography, Daughter of the East. “I am a female political leader fighting to bring modernity, communication, education and technology to Pakistan.”

Yes, fear is the right word. The fear of women, of women’s freedom, and most of all, of women’s sexuality, runs through Islamism. It is a large part of Islamist hatred of the West. “The issue of women is not marginal,” writes the Dutch scholar Ian Buruma. “It lies at the heart of Islamic occidentalism (anti-Westernism).”

It is the “deep, ignored issue”, writes Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism. Why, I wonder, is it mainly men who are making these points?

[...]

Could the murder of Bhutto be enough to wake up Western women to the fact that the war being waged by the Islamists is very much about them? Could the modern Left be persuaded that the people who killed Bhutto are the ones we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places across the world? Can we, in our niceness, stop telling ourselves they are justified in their hatred of us?

I think there are some women who understand the threat that's facing the world right now. They understand the caliphate and what that would mean but there are many women who haven't a clue why this fight is so important. Does anyone know what NOW has said about the assassination? Or are they too focused on "stereotyping toys" and "non-sexist car insurance?"

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Terrorists will participate in protecting Bush during his visit to Palestine

OK, this doesn't seem too smart:

Members of the most active West Bank terror organization are set to participate in security forces being deployed to protect President Bush during his visit to the Palestinian territories next month, WND has learned.

Bush is due in the region Jan. 9 as part of a follow-up to last month's U.S.-led Israeli-Palestinian Annapolis summit.

During his trip, the American president is scheduled to hold talks with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem, and meet quickly with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

According to Israeli security officials coordinating deployments of forces with the PA for Bush's Ramallah visit, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's declared military wing, have been called upon by the PA to participate in the protection of Bush's convoy and in securing the parameter during the meeting with Abbas.

The Brigades is listed as a terror organization by the U.S. State Department. The group took credit along with the Islamic Jihad terror organization for every suicide bombing in Israel between 2005 and 2006, and is responsible for thousands of shootings and rocket firings. Statistically, the Al Aqsa Brigades perpetuated more terrorism from the West Bank than Hamas, according to the Israeli Defense Forces.

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Merry Christmas to our troops!

Thank you for your sacrifice and your desire to service and protect this country.

"Women who do not respect the hijab and their husbands deserve to die"

More evidence of the suppression of women under Islam:

A top Muslim cleric in Iran, Hojatolislam Gholam Reza Hassani said on Wednesday that women in Iran who do not wear the hijab or Muslim headscarf, should die.

"Women who do not respect the hijab and their husbands deserve to die," said Hassani, who leads Friday prayers in the city of Urumieh, in Iranian Azerbaijan.

"I do not understand how these women who do not respect the hijab, 28 years after the birth of the Islamic Republic, are still alive," he said.

"These women and their husbands and their fathers must die," said Hassani, who is the representative of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in eastern Azerbaijan.

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King Abdullah pardons female rape victim sentenced to receive 200 lashes

It's good to see that the Saudis will respond to world-wide public outrage.

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WSJ blames Bush for NIE report

The incompetence of the Bush administration is bearing the seeds that he sowed. He should have taken care of the leakers and those who were hostile to his foreign policy years ago. Now they are trying to undermine his Iran policy:

President Bush has been scrambling to rescue his Iran policy after this week's intelligence switcheroo, but the fact that the White House has had to spin so furiously is a sign of how badly it has bungled this episode. In sum, Mr. Bush and his staff have allowed the intelligence bureaucracy to frame a new judgment in a way that has undermined four years of U.S. effort to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions.

This kind of national security mismanagement has bedeviled the Bush Presidency. Recall the internal disputes over post-invasion Iraq, the smearing of Ahmad Chalabi by the State Department and CIA, hanging Scooter Libby out to dry after bungling the response to Joseph Wilson's bogus accusations, and so on. Mr. Bush has too often failed to settle internal disputes and enforce the results.

What's amazing in this case is how the White House has allowed intelligence analysts to drive policy. The very first sentence of this week's national intelligence estimate (NIE) is written in a way that damages U.S. diplomacy: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." Only in a footnote below does the NIE say that this definition of "nuclear weapons program" does "not mean Iran's declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment."

In fact, the main reason to be concerned about Iran is that we can't trust this distinction between civilian and military. That distinction is real in a country like Japan. But we know Iran lied about its secret military efforts until it was discovered in 2003, and Iran continues to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, with 3,000 centrifuges, in defiance of binding U.N. resolutions. There is no civilian purpose for such enrichment. Iran has access to all the fuel it needs for civilian nuclear power from Russia at the plant in Bushehr. The NIE buries the potential danger from this enrichment, even though this enrichment has been the main focus of U.S. diplomacy against Iran.

All we are getting is the spin but not the truth. Our intelligence failed us on 9-11 and it looks like they are trying their best to fail us on Iran as well.

NBC rejects ad thanking the troops for their service

Because of the inclusion of Freedom's Watch's website address:

NBC has nixed holiday advertisements meant to thank troops for serving overseas in opposition to the inclusion of a non-profit's Web address

The ads, paid for by the non-profit Freedom's Watch, are a simple thank you, the group says, with people shown paying gratitude to members of the military and the final frame showing the group's Web address, www.freedomswatch.org.

[...]

NBC is refusing to air the ads as long as the address is included, according to an e-mail exchange between NBC and the group, which Freedom's Watch provided to FOX News.

"Per my previous email, the www.freedomswatch.org website will have to be redacted from the commercials for approval. This comes from Alan Wurtzel and Rick Cotton," according to one of the notes.

Wurtzel is president of research at NBC. Rick Cotton is general counsel for NBC Universal.

What a shame they won't make an exception to their policy for these ads because they really are quite lovely. See for yourself:

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Iranian hanged after verdict stay

Wow! Great justice system they have there in Iran. You get a stay but are executed anyway:

An Iranian man has been hanged for rape despite his alleged victims withdrawing their accusations and a judicial review being ordered into the sentence.

Makwan Mouloudzadeh, 20, had been found guilty of raping three teenage boys when he was 13 years old.

The hanging took place on Wednesday morning at a prison in Kermanshah province in western Iran.

Human rights groups say international law strictly forbids execution of child offenders, even after they become 18.

"On 11 November the head of the justice administration of Kermanshah received an order from the judiciary head, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, to stop the verdict being carried out," the lawyer, Saeed Eqbali, was quoted as saying.

"But the case, which was supposed to be reviewed in Tehran, was sent back from there to Kermanshah, and the execution was carried out quickly," the lawyer said.

[...]

During court proceedings, Mr Mouloudzadeh withdrew a confession he had made earlier, saying it had been the result of coercion by the police, the US-based group says.

You know, for a country that supposed to be living under God's law they are awfully unjust. It certainly doesn't sound like this:

Deuteronomy 16:19 You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous.

Deuteronomy 32:4 "The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.

Hanging an innocent child when he's been given a reprieve? Really doesn't sound like what the God of Scriptures would do.

This is what man thinks is righteousness.

Iran is still a threat

According to our European allies. I don't think they trust the NIE report:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have said Iran continues to pose a threat.

The comments came as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began talks with European and Russian officials in Brussels on Iran's nuclear programme.

A US intelligence report published on Monday said Iran had suspended a nuclear weapons programme in 2003.

But the report also said that Iran was continuing to enrich uranium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons.

Iran says the aims of its nuclear programme are peaceful.

"Iran continues to represent a threat," Mrs Merkel said during a joint news conference with Mr Sarkozy in Paris.

She did not specifically express support for a new UN sanctions resolution against Iran, which the US is calling for.

OK, he's still a threat but lets not impose sanctions. What? That doesn't make any sense!

House Democrat on Iraq: "There is no question that the security situation has improved,"

Another Democrat notices that the military can actually do the job they are tasked to do. Shocking!

Rep. Earl Pomeroy says he saw significant security improvements in Iraq during his fifth trip to the country, but said much more is needed.

"I've never felt more hopeful about the success of the effort than coming back from this trip," Pomeroy, D-N.D., told reporters on Wednesday. "At the same time, we need to transition this now, so the United States no longer carries the principal combat and security functions."

[...]

He said he saw significant improvements since his last trip in July 2006. For the first time, he said, he and his congressional traveling companions were allowed out of the secure Green Zone in Baghdad.

[...]

Pomeroy said he believes the administration is not doing enough to end the war. He has voted with fellow Democrats several times this year to establish timetables for withdrawal from the country.

If the surge is working, then why not let the military determine when to leave instead of the defacto defunding that the cowards in the Democrat leadership are doing now.

Sunni insurgent turns to Americans in the middle of a gun battle

Here's a back story of what happened when one of the Sunni insurgent leaders turned on al-Qaeda in May:

He hailed the car carrying the feared leader of Al Qaeda in the neighborhood, a man known as the White Lion, on one of Amariyah's main streets. "We want you to stop destroying our neighborhood," he told the man.

"Do you know who you are talking to?" said the White Lion, getting out of his car. "I am Al Qaeda. I will destroy even your own houses!"

He pulled out his pistol and shot at Abul Abed. The gun jammed. He reloaded and fired again. Again, the gun jammed.

By this time, Abul Abed said, he had pulled his own gun. He fired once, killing the White Lion.

"I walked over to him, stepped on his hand and took his gun," Abul Abed, which is a nom de guerre, said at his new, pink-painted headquarters in a renovated school in Amariyah, as an American Army captain seated in the corner nodded his head in affirmation of the account. "And then the fight started."

It was the beginning of the end for Al Qaeda in Amariyah. The next day, a firefight erupted. Al Qaeda fighters closed in on Abul Abed. Most of the 150 men who had joined him fled. Holed up in a mosque with fewer than a dozen supporters, Abul Abed thought the end was near.

"The blue carpet was soaked red with blood," he recalled. Then the imam of the mosque called in American help.

A friendship was born.

[...]

'Americans are our protectors'

Abul Abed said the Sunni revolution has gone too far for that.

"Americans are our protectors and saviors," he said.

The real enemy of Iraq, he says, now is Iran. He pulled out his mobile phone to show pictures he has saved of the bodies of his four brothers, who were kidnapped and murdered in 2005 by what he suspects was a Shiite death squad with ties to Iran. One of them had a nail driven into his head. Another was missing a hand.

"Even animals wouldn't do that," he said, his face darkening. "Iran is so deeply infiltrated in Iraq, the problem here still cannot be solved. Iran wants to demolish us. If the Americans leave, then you can count Iraq as a second Tehran."

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Supplemental Bill Needed to Fund Anti-IED Effort, Director Says

The military can thank Reid for it's shortage. I'm the sure the enemy appreciates his efforts.

If Congress does not come through with a supplemental bill President Bush will sign, money for defeating the largest killers of American personnel in the war on terror will run out Dec. 1, a senior official said here today.

Retired Army Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, told Pentagon reporters that the organization will have to stop funding new initiatives and just maintain operations.

“We’re out of (funding) new stuff now; we’re going to have trouble sustaining current contracts after the first of December,” Meigs said.

The anti-IED organization needs the funding to sustain operations and to pay for equipment fielded but not yet turned over to the services for funding, Meigs said. For example, he said, his organization funds the Guardian man-portable jammer, the contractors to service it, and the training in the system.

The organization tests new projects, ideas, ways of doing business and equipment against IEDs. If they prove effective, the organization is nimble enough to quickly can get the equipment to the hands of servicemembers. Meigs said the organization has enough money “to keep the lights on” through April. The organization is funded via supplemental spending bills.

“What I can’t fund today will not go into the field next summer or next fall,” Meigs said. “It’ll be delayed by the amount of time we wait for funding.”

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Hope In Iraq

More good news from Iraq:

Five months ago, Suhaila al-Aasan lived in an oxygen tank factory with her husband and two sons, convinced that they would never go back to their apartment in Dora, a middle-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

Today she is home again, cooking by a sunlit window, sleeping beneath her favorite wedding picture. And yet, she and her family are remarkably alone. The half-dozen other apartments in her building echo with emptiness and, on most days, Iraqi soldiers are the only neighbors she sees.

“I feel happy,” she said, standing in her bedroom, between a flowered bedspread and a bullet hole in the wall. “But my happiness is not complete. We need more people to come back. We need more people to feel safe.”

Mrs. Aasan, 45, a Shiite librarian with an easy laugh, is living at the far end of Baghdad’s tentative recovery. She is one of many Iraqis who in recent weeks have begun to test where they can go and what they can do when fear no longer controls their every move.

The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a high of 44 in the city in February. The number of bodies appearing on Baghdad’s streets has plummeted to about 5 a day, from as many as 35 eight months ago, and suicide bombings across Iraq fell to 16 in October, half the number of last summer and down sharply from a recent peak of 59 in March, the American military says.

As a result, for the first time in nearly two years, people are moving with freedom around much of this city. In more than 50 interviews across Baghdad, it became clear that while there were still no-go zones, more Iraqis now drive between Sunni and Shiite areas for work, shopping or school, a few even after dark. In the most stable neighborhoods of Baghdad, some secular women are also dressing as they wish. Wedding bands are playing in public again, and at a handful of once shuttered liquor stores customers now line up outside in a collective rebuke to religious vigilantes from the Shiite Mahdi Army.

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Ron Paul attracts the attention of Muslim voters

They're attracted to his isolationism and his willingness to cede the Middle East to the jihadists:

After the Republican debate on Tuesday evening in Dearborn, Mich., a reporter from the Arab-American News asked Ron Paul what he thought of the term “Islamic fascism.”

“It’s a false term to make people think we’re fighting Hitler,” Paul responded. “It’s war propaganda designed to generate fear so that the war has to be spread.”

The call has gone out to all the Muslim Americans to hurry up and register to vote Republican so that they can vote in the Republican Primary to support Ron Paul, the anti-interventionist, non-isolationist candidate for President of the United States. Muslims are opening their wallets and joining teaparty07.com as well.

An anonymous Ron Paul supporter posted the following message on the internet: “Muslims and Americans have an unique window of opportunity for the 2008 election. There is a candidate running as a Republican that would work to completely cut off the funding to Israel, remove ALL US troops from Arab lands, and repeal the Patriot Act. He’s a Republican with Libertarian views named Ron Paul. Ron Paul’s policies ranging from monetary to foreign are top notch. Till now Muslims and Americans have not had an American Presidential candidate that really suited their best interests. This election is unique in that we have a man running as a Republican that speaks the truth…We know the current policies in the Middle East are failing, not only making it less safe in the world but hurting and killing innocent Muslims, which our media callously calls collateral damage. It is our duty as Muslims to follow the truth regardless of how futile it may seem. Ron Paul is the only candidate that does not seem to be swayed by the influential lobbies that the other candidates are catering to.”

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Sunni and Shia banding together to fight al-Qaeda

So much for that civil war that we've heard so much about:

Despite persistent sectarian tensions in the Iraqi government, war-weary Sunnis and Shiites are joining hands at the local level to protect their communities from militants on both sides, U.S. military officials say.

In the last two months, a U.S.-backed policing movement called Concerned Citizens, launched last year in Sunni-dominated Anbar province under the banner of the Awakening movement, has spread rapidly into the mixed Iraqi heartland.

Of the nearly 70,000 Iraqi men in the Awakening movement, started by Sunni Muslim sheiks who turned their followers against Al Qaeda in Iraq, there are now more in Baghdad and its environs than anywhere else, and a growing number of those are Shiite Muslims.

Commanders in the field think they have tapped into a genuine public expression of reconciliation that has outpaced the elected government's progress on mending the sectarian rift.

"What you find is these people have lived together for decades with no problem until the terrorists arrived and tried to instigate the problem," said Lt. Col. Valery Keaveny, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 509th Airborne unit in the Iskandariya area south of Baghdad. "So they are perfectly willing to work together to keep the terrorists out."

[...]

"Sunnis-Shiites, no problem," said Obede Ali Hussein, 22, who stood at a checkpoint built by the U.S. Army along the Diyala River. "We want to protect our neighborhood."

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Eventually, the politicians will see that reconciliation is necessary because the people will demand it. And then where does that leave Reid and the rest of the Democrats who have desperately been trying to surrender?

4,000 new Iraqi troops ready

I guess this means that some of our troops will be coming home -- how will the Democrats spin it when that happens?

In the expanse of gray desert east of Baghdad, an Iraqi Army brigade marched Sunday in matching boots and uniforms with M-16 rifles slung over their shoulder, showing off their new formation to Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.

The ceremony marked the first time an Iraqi brigade had made it to graduation as a fully trained and equipped unit, and Iraqi officials called it a milestone.

When a second brigade completes training, about 4,000 Iraqi soldiers will be added to Baghdad, freeing four Iraqi battalions to return home and fill holes left by a nearly yearlong campaign to secure the capital.

''This will increase the combat strength of the Iraqi Army throughout the country,'' said Lt. Gen. James Dubik, commander of the Multi-National Security Transition
Command.

[...]

At the end of the ceremony, Maliki declared himself, the government and Iraq a success, but warned the recruits:

''You have been taught the importance of the chain of command, you are not to be influenced in any way by any who are outside your chain of command,'' he said. ``Leave politics to politicians . . . you as military men, as soldiers, as heroes have the responsibility to protect the state so that all may live in peace whether they are in harmony or have differences.''

The return of Baghdad's nightlife

Further proof that the surge is working. I bet Reid is kicking himself for saying that the war is lost. What the Republicans should do an run ad with Reid's infamous words of defeat intoned over shots of the improved conditions on the ground and the quotes from this article:

And then, suddenly, you've arrived and the mirage has become an oasis of generator-driven light; a colourful jumble of trendy juice bars, cosy restaurants, fruit shops, roadside eateries and fish vendors, where children play, families dine and lovers meet.

"Even two or three months ago we would have been afraid to come here at night," said 20-year-old Hussein Salah, an off-duty soldier, slurping a milkshake with his wife, Shihad, at the Mishmesha (apricot) juice bar in Baghdad's relatively safe Karrada suburb.

"Now we sometimes sit outside here till one or two in the morning. It is quite safe. The security situation is vastly improved," said Salah, the orange light from a nearby flashing palm alternatively brightening and dimming his clean-shaven face.

Declines in Iraqi civilian casualties and a sharp reduction in bomb and mortar attacks have sparked optimism that the capital is at last starting to revive.

[...]

"As you can see, things are normal here. It's after eight o'clock and the streets are still full," he added, pointing to the groups of people, families and even single women wearing headscarves strolling up and down the road.

"Six months ago we had to close up by 7 pm, now we stay open till 9 or even later," he said, as live carp flapped about in a tank inside his small stall plastered with pictures of Iraqi Shiite clerics.

[...]

Up the road butcher Halim Sayed Ahmed, an Egyptian with a round face and hint of a moustache, is counting his lucky stars he didn't follow the rest of his family to Cairo when the conflict began ripping Baghdad apart two years ago.

"The butchery is thriving. Sales are up 80 percent compared to the beginning of the year" when violence was at its peak, he said between mounds of freshly cut chicken pieces, mincemeat and mutton.

"I have been here 30 years and I love Baghdad," he said. "Now that the security situation is improving, my family can return."

[...]

"I was shocked when I returned to see how much things had changed," he said. "It's like a different city. Things are so good that I now think it would be possible for me to get married."

Hoyer Credits Surge for 'Decrease in Violence' in Iraq

Now that the surge appears to be having its desired affect, I was beginning to wonder how long it would take for the Democrats to start claiming victory in Iraq. Evidently, not long:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said on Tuesday that the troop surge, which began in June, has had a significant impact on the situation in Iraq and noted that he had always been critical of the Bush administration for deploying an insufficient number of troops in previous years.

"Stability and a decrease in violence, they've done that - God bless them. I'm not surprised that they did," Hoyer told Cybercast News Service in response to a question about steadily declining U.S. casualty rates in Iraq.

[...]

"I am not surprised, therefore, that when we send 20,000 additional troops and put them in an area of consequence that those 20,000 troops from the best army in the world, the best trained, best equipped army in the world brings a very heightened security," he said.

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Yes, he always knew the surge would work and maybe he did. I'm just waiting for Reid to say this (technically he was for the surge before Bush proposed it :-)

Here's the audio.

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3,000 refugees return to Baghdad

I guess we all can agree now that the surge is working and making Iraq safer for the refugees to return. I wonder when Reid will apologize to the troops and admit he was wrong.

In a dramatic turnaround, more than 3,000 Iraqi families driven out of their Baghdad neighborhoods have returned to their homes in the past three months as sectarian violence has dropped, the government said Saturday.

Saad al-Azawi, his wife and four children are among them. They fled to Syria six months ago, leaving behind what had become one of the capital's more dangerous districts—west Baghdad's largely Sunni Khadra region.

The family had been living inside a vicious and bloody turf battle between al-Qaida in Iraq and Mahdi Army militiamen. But Azawi said things began changing, becoming more peaceful, in August when radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army fighters to stand down nationwide.

About the same time, the Khadra neighborhood Awakening Council rose up against brutal al-Qaida control—the imposition of its austere interpretation of Islam, along with the murder and torture of those who would not comply.

The uprising originated in Iraq's west and flowed into the capital. Earlier this year, the Sunni tribes and clans in the vast Anbar province began their own revolt and have successfully rid the largely desert region of al-Qaida control.

At one point the terrorist group virtually controlled Anbar, often with the complicity of the vast Sunni majority who welcomed the outsiders in their fight against American forces.

But, U.S. officials say, al-Qaida overplayed its hand with Iraq's Sunnis, who practice a moderate version of Islam. American forces were quick to capitalize on the upheaval, welcoming former Sunni enemies as colleagues in securing what was once the most dangerous region of the country.

And as 30,000 additional U.S. forces arrived for the crackdown in Baghdad and central Iraq, the American commander, Gen. David Petraeus, began stationing many of them in neighborhood outposts. The mission was not only to take back control but to foster neighborhood groups like the one in Khadra to shake off al-Qaida's grip.

The 40-year-old al-Azawi, who has gone back to work managing a car service, said relatives and friends persuaded him to bring his family home.

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Al-Zawahri Threatens Libya

This is an interesting turn of events. It seems that al-Qaeda wants to make sure that Muslim nations don't become America's allies. Maybe since they're losing the war in Iraq, they're going to hit on other fronts:

Al-Qaida's No. 2 figure harshly criticized Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in a new audio tape Saturday, accusing him of being an enemy of Islam and threatening a wave of attacks against the North African country because it improved relations with the U.S.

In the 28-minute audio tape called "Unity of the Ranks," Ayman al-Zawahri also announced that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group was joining ranks with al-Qaida.

"The Islamic nation is witnessing a blessed step ... The brothers are escalating the confrontation against the enemies of Islam: Gadhafi and his masters, the Washington crusaders," al-Zawahri said in the audio tape. The recording could not be independently verified, but it appeared on a Web site commonly used by insurgents and carried the logo of al-Qaida's media production house, as-Sahab.

The recording also carried a message from Abu Laith al-Libi, a Libyan al-Qaida commander in Afghanistan who accused Gadhafi of decades of tyranny.

"He is the tyranny of Libya and is dragging the country to the swamp," al-Libi said in the recording that also featured old video footage of him walking with other masked gunmen.