"It may be, though, that al Qaeda's religious ideology of armed jihad means that it cannot lay low even if it might be advantageous. It cannot merely engineer the US withdrawal, it must be known to have done so. So it keeps bombing and shooting.

Except now it may have actually developed a strategy to fight America. This strategy is very simple and has excellent potential that is already being realized.

1. Target American news media, not for attack but for propaganda.

2. Through the media, buttress the idea in the minds of American politicians that Iraq is lost and there is no reasonable recourse but to begin withdrawing as soon as possible.

I would submit that al Qaeda is significantly accomplishing this strategy, so obviously so that I need not offer cites. And let it be remembered that now the calls for withdrawal do not come from only one party."