thursday an islamic website posted an audio allegedly recorded by zarqawii’s replacement; the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, shown here in a photo released by the U.S. military in June. Put the face with the name; this is Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the man who claimed to have committed the horrible murders of Menchaca and Tucker, and desecrated their bodies, tying them together rigging the corpses with a bomb.

Naturally, the recently released Intelligence Study was supposed to, according to leftists, prove that the war in Iraq made more terrorists, or made the war “worse”. That isn’t the way Al Qaeda sees it, apparently.

Because WOops, it appears as though al-Masri made a big boo-boo in the propaganda campaign against the west with his complaints of how 4,000 foreign terrorists have been killed in Iraq since 2003.

“The blood has been spilled in Iraq of more than 4,000 foreigners who came to fight,” said the man, who identified himself as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir — also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri — the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.

So if Iraq is as the leftists say–a ‘distraction from the real war on terror’ (whatever that means), al-Muhajir didn’t get the memo. He’s just the guy who had to step over the corpse of his predecessor, al-Zarqawi in order to assume the title of the new head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, what’s he know, anyway? The Arabic word he used indicated he was speaking about foreigners who joined Al Qaeda in Iraq, not coalition troops.

So I guess 4,000 dead foreign terrorists has nothing to do with the war on terrorism, heh? And 4,000 dead Al Qaeda terrorist fighters certainly wouldn’t indicate that we brought the fight to them, now, would it?

Melanie Morgan from Move America Forward reminds us of the recently released intelligence reports that the media are reporting in their usual anti-American way.

This week the Washington Post insisted that new intelligence documents served “… as validation of their [Democrats’] long-standing position that the Iraq war has been a distraction from the broader war against terrorists.”

A Sept. 12 Reuters report echoed that premise. “Democrats counter that the Iraq war is a distraction from the war on terrorism rather than a part of it,” reported Reuters.

Tim Grieve of the liberal e-journal, Salon.com, writes similarly, “After all, Iraq is a distraction from the war on terrorism. …”

Pay no attention to the man behind the terrorist curtain

So I ask you – why would 4,000 Islamic terrorists aligned with al-Qaida rush to Iraq and be killed if these terrorists didn’t think that the war in Iraq was the frontline in the war on terrorism?

Maybe these terrorists know something more about their murderous jihad than all the liberal, anti-war second-guessers here in the United States who consistently have tried to undermine the war effort.

Don’t for a moment think that this latest report from al-Qaida in Iraq will change the rhetoric or the tenor of either the anti-war zealots or their allies in the news media. These are, after all, the same people who keep telling us there is no connection between Iraq and al-Qaida in the same news stories that they quote the leader of “al-Qaida in Iraq.”