NewsMax.com: Inside Cover Story

NewsMax.com: Inside Cover Story: "Saturday, Nov. 27, 2004 12:53 p.m. EST



Zarqawi: U.S. 'Infidels' Have Us on the Ropes



The world's most dangerous terrorist, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, announced on Wednesday that the battle of Fallujah was a massive defeat for the Iraqi insurgency, blaming the debacle on Sunni Muslim clerics who failed to support his reign of terror.



'Hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence,' Zarqawi said in an audiotape posted on an Islamic Web site known as al-Qala'a, which has been a mailbox for Islamic militant groups.



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'You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy,' the notorious mass murderer complained. 'You have stopped supporting the holy warriors.'



The finger-pointing tape from Zarqawi is the clearest indication yet that the U.S. offensive in Fallujah has been a massive success and could be the beginning of a rout for terrorist forces in Iraq.



The tape reveals the Jordanian-born terrorist sounding desperate as he admits that his forces are 'surrounded' by U.S. troops, who are 'cutting the throats of the holy warriors.'



'Are your hearts not shaken by the scenes of your brothers being surrounded and hurt by your enemy?' he asks plaintively.



'How long will you continue to abandon the nation to the tyrants of the east and of the west, who are inflicting the worst suffering, cutting the throats of the holy warriors, the best children of the nation, and taking its riches? ...



'You made peace with the tyranny and handed over the country and its people to the Jews and Crusaders by resorting to silence on their crimes and preventing our youth from heading to the battlefields in order to defend our religion,' he complained.



Though the Zarqawi tape is the best news to come out of Iraq since Saddam Hussein's capture last year, the American press has downplayed the story.



The New York Times, for instance, covered the top terrorist's stunning admission on page A22 of its little-read Thanksgiving Day edition.



The Washington Post buried the bombshell news in a Thanksgiving Day report headlined 'American Envoy Killed in Baghdad,' where quotes from the Zarqawi tape weren't even mentioned until the 17th paragraph."