Read this column by Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan (home of the soon-to-be-defeated Wolverines):
In declaring "infidels" all who vote under the "infidel" interim constitution negotiated by Iraqi politicians with US civil administrator Paul Bremer last winter, Bin Laden is seeking to counter the decree of grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani that Iraqis must vote in the upcoming elections or they will be consigned to hell. Bin Laden is arguing, according to the Aljazeera.net in Arabic, that the interim constitution that is the framework for elections is artificial and pagan ("jahili", pertaining to the Age of Ignorance before Islam) because it does not recognize Islam as the sole source of law.It isn't going to matter to the anti-war Left, but the ties between international Islamofascist terrorism and the Saddamites are now unmistakable. Osama has cast his lot with Zarqawi ---a murderer who was in Iraq long before we showed up and who must have had at least Saddam's tacit approval to be there, being a major league Kurd-killer.
Bin Laden's intervention in Iraq was hamfisted and clumsy, and will benefit the United States and the Shiites enormously. Most Iraqi Muslims, Sunni or Shiite, dislike the Wahhabi branch of Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia, and with which Bin Laden is associated. Nationalistic Iraqis will object to a foreigner interfering in their national affairs.
Osama's definitely off his game. He's antagonizing Sistani, giving support to the Zarqawiites, and is reduced to issuing pointless fatwas from a cave somewhere. It's going to be sweet when the sight of his rotten corpse is broadcast to the world.