AL-ZARQAWI'S NEW WARNING TO THE WEST

"WHAT IS COMING IS EVEN WORSE"

CLAIMS US SOLDIERS ARE COMMITTING SUICIDE IN IRAQ



"What is coming is more painful," said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the terrorist group al-Qa'ida in Iraq, in a new half video released on the internet yesterday.

Alleged to have beheaded American and British hostages (while wearing a mask) and being at the forefront of the most deadly attacks on Shiite and Western forces in Iraq, al-Zarqawi showed off what he said were new weapons in the video, and was seen walking through a desert landscape surrounded by heavily armed security guards. He even showed himself firing a machine gun in the exact same pose, and camera angle, as the character John Rambo in the iconic American movie First Blood.

He praised mujahedin fighters for fighting hard in Iraq :

"Your mujahedin sons were able to confront the most ferocious of crusader campaigns on a Muslim state. They have stood in the face of this onslaught for three years."

He claimed :

"Any government which is formed in Iraq now - whether by Shias or Zionist Kurds, or those who are dubbed Sunnis - would only be a (US) stooge."

He directed questions to US President Bush :

"Why don't you tell people that your soldiers are committing suicide, taking drugs and hallucination pills to make them sleep?

He issued hard warnings :

"By God, your dreams will be defeated by our blood and by our bodies. What is coming is even worse."

And he pointed out that the West was offered a truce, which was rejected outright by the US :

"Our emir, Sheikh Osama bin Laden, has offered you a truce, which was good for you if you had accepted. But you turned it down, because of your arrogance."

Al-Zarqawi is now the most wanted man in the world, alongside bin Laden, and while President Bush and a stream of US, UK and Australian politicians claimed they were not intimidated, and that they were winning the War On Iraq, and the War On Terror in general, the video clearly showed that Al-Zarqawi was in good health and clear in his purpose and intent.

And all the more dangerous for being so.

For the first few days of this week, at least, Al-Zarqawi showed he was winning the propaganda war.