Osama finally goes to bat for Abu Omar al-Baghdadi

Jihadis were excited yesterday to note that Osama bin Laden, in his latest tape, mentions Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State of Iraq, both by name, by way of specifically endorsing them, something he had not done before. One post transcribed this part of the bin Laden speech:

The emir Abu Omar and his brothers are not among those who bargain with their religion...or who meet the enemy half-way. They are persistent in the right, and seek to please their Creator even if they anger men... If the leaders of the Islamic State of Iraq put their hand in the hand of any of the neighboring countries to be a support for them, as some of the groups and parties have done, that would not be a solution, because those budgets of tens and hundreds of millions put them under their protection...[as a result] they lose their stability and independence because of the support of those countries, when America and its agents put pressure on those supporting countries, until they transmit that pressure onto the head of the party or the emir of the group [concerned], as people have seen in the case of Lebanon...

And there is another type of case where the supporting and financing country pressures them to require their army [referring here to the Mahdi Army] to take an open ended vacation of six months , renewable! Has anyone heard of an army taking a vacation when the enemy has their country pinned down? ...

Now as to the question of a lot of people not being familiar with the history of the commanders of the mujahideen in Iraq, I say: This is on account of the circumstances of war and its security implications. I judge that this lack of familiarity with the leaders of the mujahideen in Iraq is a lack that does no harm because they are vouched for by the confidence of upright persons like Abu Omar, who is vouched for by upright persons among the mujahideen. Abu Musab [Zarqawi] vouched for him, and the minister of war Abu Hamza al Muhajir, and these are people who are vouched for by their patience and steadfastness in the thunderbolts of the attacks in the heights of the Hindukush, and these are people known to your brothers in Afghanistan... The failure to pledge allegiance to the emir of the commanders of the mujahideen on the excuse of not knowing their history, after they have been vouched for in this way, leads to enormous problems, the main one being the inability to form a large group of Muslims under a single Imam, and this is wrong [or null and void].

The excerpt is cited on the jihadi boards by way of trying to bolster support for Abu Omar and his team. The point about not having financial support from any of the neighboring countries could merely mean that the group doesn't enjoy the support of Saudi Arabia and other countries any longer, possibly as a result of American pressure. And the point about the thunderbolts on the peaks of the Hindukush clearly reflects a need to try and somehow graft the mysterious and unknown Abu Omar al-Baghdadi onto the folk-hero traditions of those close to bin Laden in their finest hour in Afghanistan.