know your enemy

Baseball Crank takes a look at how Al Qaeda views the war in Iraq:

in assessing both our progress in this war and how close we are to accomplishing our objectives, we need to step back sometimes and see how things look from the other side. As it happens, CENTCOM released today English translations of documents captured from Zarqawi's Al Qaeda-in-Iraq ("AQIZ") that were captured in an April 16 raid. Coming on the heels of Gen. Barry McCaffery's assessment (see here and here) of the war from the US perspective, it's interesting to see almost a complete mirror image of the strengths and weaknesses of the other side and the lessons we can draw therefrom in determining how to sufficiently demoralize the enemy to bring about a decision by the other side to throw in the towel and move its resources elsewhere

The captured documents reveal that Al Qaeda has essentially given up on military victory, instead foccusing on

a media oriented policy without a clear comprehensive plan to capture an area or an enemy center. Other word, the significance of the strategy of their work is to show in the media that the American and the government do not control the situation and there is resistance against them.

His conclusion:

This is such an obvious point that it's amazing it needs to be repeated: the United States can only be defeated by bad press.

Fortunately for Al Qaeda, our press is pretty bad. I'm sure if political pressure leads to a premature withdrawal from Iraq and a bloody fracturing of the nascent Iraqi government, members of our press corps will sleep easy at night in the knowledge that their negativity had nothing to do with the unpleasant consequences.