"When even the Sunni Salafis of Mosul consider you too fundamentalist

[Career Prole]

you have probably gone too far."

Prof. Juan Cole of the "Informed Comment" blog made a joke! Who says Middle Eastern history experts can't be funny? :D

AP also reports, 'in a telephone interview with Al-Jazeera television, Saif al-Deen al-Baghdadi, an official of the insurgents' political office, urged militants to fight U.S. forces outside Fallujah. "I call upon the scores or hundreds of the brothers from the mujahedeen ... to press the American forces outside . . . We chose the path of armed jihad and say clearly that ridding Iraq of the occupation will not be done by ballots. Ayad Allawi's government ... represents the fundamentalist right-wing of the White House and not the Iraqi people.'' '

That the context for the current fighting is in part the upcoming elections in January is clear from al-Baghdadi's statement. The guerrillas and other forces are rejecting such participation, and the question is whether they can win over the generality of Sunni Arabs to their rejectionist point of view.

On a lighter note, it is hard to avoid observing that al-Baghdadi castigated Bush's administration as "fundamentalist" and "right-wing." When even the Sunni Salafis of Mosul consider you too fundamentalist and right-wing, you have probably gone too far.
http://www.juancole.com/2004/11/mosul-chaos-al-hayat-reported.html