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Dead men walking: oh and a new Inspire

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I swore and I swore and I swore that I wasn’t going to do this. No getting sucked back into the blog until serious (read: real) work is done. But yet here I am like some drunken moth drawn back to a flame.

It is late so I will try to be brief. First there is a new issue of Inspire magazine out, which I’m downloading at the moment (or at least the banner ad says it is out, I’m having problems decompressing the file.) Ok, now it is done.

Inspire is only one of many releases that the al-Malahim media wing has put out recently, earlier today there was a 14 minute audio from Qasim al-Raymi, which I only listened to once with my cereal this morning, so I will refrain from commenting.

Also, in the first installment of dead man walking it appears that Ibrahim al-Rubaysh is not, in fact, dead. As he gave a rather moving eulogy for Zayid al-Ghadir al-Awlaqi late last week. Say what you will about the former Guantanamo Bay detainee, his eulogy was impressive Arabic: muqbalan ghayr mughdirin.

So, much like Mr. Orange (whose comments I have been enjoying) has been suggesting in the comments section, al-Rubaysh is not dead. I still haven’t had a chance to check the video, but I swear (and a couple of Yemenis agree with me) that he was announced as dead in a video earlier this summer. Back to the video evidence.

Finally, we have the continually intriguing case of Fahd al-Quso (I gave in to journalistic spelling) and not just because all the media outlets want to talk about the 10th Anniversary of the USS Cole. News Yemen has this interesting story today that suggests that his tribe with the al-Awlaq has petitioned the government to request his body back from Pakistan.

Sounds like his family is confirming what some of us (but not me) suspected, yes? Not so fast. The article goes on to say that since al-Quso is dead the government should release his older brother and nephew, which it has been holding for the past couple of years. So maybe, just maybe, this is a ploy by the tribe to get two of its members released. Stirring the pot quite a bit, is the final line of the article from a source close to al-Quso, who suggests he never left Yemen.

Now for Inspire: the news will be the article “I’m proud to be a traitor to America” by Samir Khan. There are also pictures from Abyan and a new article from al-Awlaki.

I would like to promise more analysis later, but I have exhausted my blogging patience for the day.

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