al-Zawahri Auditions for Role as Democratic Spokesman

Dateline some cave in Pakistan: Al Qaeda's number two man, apparently channeling Howard Dean, delivered a doleful taped message to the world over the weekend. "As long as this malignant illness continues to survive within us, there is no hope for victory and there can only be more defeats, tragedies, disasters and betrayals," al-Zawahri said.

The correlation between the language the Democrats use to describe the war situation and that used by our terrorist adversaries is unmistakable. The problem is, of course, that they can't both be right. Either we're winning or we aren't. The reality is that we are winning. Iraq is preparing to hold its third free election this week. Women are voting in Saudi Arabian elections...and in Kuwait. The Syrian thugs were kicked out of Lebanon. Lybia abandoned its nuclear weapons program (the one the CIA didn't know anything about). The list goes on and on.

al-Zawahri is trying to rally the troops, but it's clear from both his own words and from world events that things aren't going his way. The good news (for him at least) is that even if his cause is collapsing around his head, if he keeps up this defeatist talk, he can always get a job as a spokesman for the Democratic Party. Now if he could just learn to say "YEARGH!"