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Who Would Have Guessed

Who would have guessed that such a reasonable analysis of the Obama/McCain race would come from the Iranian government:

We are leaning more in favor of Barack Obama because he is more flexible and rational, even though we know American policy will not change that much…

(h/t Powerline)

But before you make up your mind based on Iran's analysis, you should know that al Qaeda has endorsed McCain.  From an article in WaPo (link):

"Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election," said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the "failing march of his predecessor," President Bush…

In language that was by turns mocking and ominous, the newest posting credited al-Qaeda with having lured Washington into a trap that had "exhausted its resources and bankrupted its economy." It further suggested that a terrorist strike might swing the election to McCain and guarantee an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world.

"It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda," said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. "Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America."

Curiously, although Hamas' brief endorsement of Obama was clearly genuine (link), this perspective from al-Qaeda was clearly a case of reverse psychology (link).

Obviously, al-Qaeda has no hope of defeating us in any sort of conventional conflict.  Therefore, they have a different strategy as bin Laden outlined in 2004: (link):

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript.

He said the mujahedeen fighters did the same thing to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, "using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers."

"We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat," bin Laden said.
He also said al Qaeda has found it "easy for us to provoke and bait this administration."

"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations," bin Laden said.

Good thing we were too smart to fall for that and didn't get lured into a seemingly endless occupation of a Middle Eastern country that would cost us hundreds of billions of dollars right before our economy teetered on the verge of collapse..er..I mean, unfortunately, he's right that we have been (and many of us continue to be) eager to take the bait.

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