Fox Analyst: New Tape Shows Al Qaeda Using ‘All of the Antiwar Arguments’ And ‘Turning Them Back Against Us’

Think Progress
Sep. 03, 2006

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Early today, Al Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a new videotape in which he appeared alongside a man “identified as an American member of the terror network.”

Within minutes, Fox News brought on right-wing author Richard Miniter to provide expert analysis of the video. Miniter said that “what’s striking” about Zawahiri “is that he’s using a lot of the same rhetoric as the antiwar crowd. He refers to President Bush as a liar and a defeated president…They call him a failure, an incompetent.”

Also in the tape, Zawahiri says “Bush was foolish to turn down the truce offered by Osama bin Laden as an honorable way out.” Miniter said this claim and others is what “Michael Moore and John Kerry were saying a year ago,” and now al Qaeda is “turning them back against us.”

Full transcript:

MINITER: Absolutely, this is designed for the September 11th anniversary. But also what’s striking, if you read the transcript of this tape — and I should say the CIA has not yet confirmed that this is indeed the voice of al-Zawahiri, although I think we have to presume that it is — is that he’s using a lot of the same rhetoric as the antiwar crowd. He refers to President Bush as a liar and a defeated president, hinting that somehow the election in 2000 was illegitimate. They call him a failure, an incompetent. These are the kinds of things that the antiwar crowd has been saying. Also on the tape, he says that Bush was foolish to turn down the truce offered by Osama bin Laden as an honorable way out, and says if the United States is winning, why is it debating a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq? Again, this is all something that they are picking up from the world media, all of the antiwar arguments, and they’re are turning them back against us. Zawahiri is saying what Michael Moore and John Kerry were saying a year ago.