Al Qaeda is a network of terrorist organizations.
We have consistently taken out the leadership of these organizations over the past few years, and as new leadership has emerged, we’ve taken them out as well.
Yes, Al Qaeda is incompetent. THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN INCOMPETENT. THEY HAVE ALWAYS RELIED upon the liberal base within the US to create political disasters for the US.
Al Qaeda have always been fools.
Al Qaeda have always been incompetent pigs.
Al Qaeda have always been morons and idiots who found and exploited weaknesses in an open society like ours, but ultimately, have nothing going for them other than our own hostile press offices.
Part of my point. They are aware of the major setbacks in Diyala and Anbar and elsewhere, which is not exactly a morale boost.
The idea that al-Qaeda is posting that its fighters are going to Mosul in force is to me the most incredible portion of the account. Do you really think al-Qaeda is that incompetent?
AQ might not do that, but on the other hand, a sympathizer with some inside info who is either not the sharpest knife in the drawer or has lost control of his emotions might. Remember that AQ is a very loose federation of jihadist groups, not a tight top-down organization like traditional militaries.
Moreover, there is some fairly compelling evidence of AQ incompetence in certain areas of propaganda/P.R. The Anbar loss shows them to be so totally insensitive and ignorant of the local culture, so arrogant and murderously vicious to the locals -- everything the Ugly American is supposed to be -- that they couldn't have alienated the locals any more than if it was their goal. Think about that for a moment -- they drove the Anbar tribes (their main stronghold) into the arms of the Americans. How much dumber can you get than that?
So yes, like any military force, sometimes they really CAN be that incompetent. Military history is full of what-the-@#$%-were-they-thinking moments, like how it was that nobody knew on D-Day that the hedgerows in France were 6-10 feet high and not 2-3 like in England.
Of course, the al-Qaeda fighters (mostly Saudis and North Africans who cross the border after flying to Damascus) may simply be telling the local blabbermouths that they're going to Mosul as a disinfo thing when they are instead, for instance, concentrating on preparing to attack the British withdrawal in the south.
Quite possible but irrelevant to my point.
But then, who really knows? And that is my point. It's like reading one solier's negative report and thinking that is the whole truth. Or reading another soldier's positive letter and thinking that is the whole truth. Even if you assume they're sincere, you have no way of judging how they evaluate what they've seen, the situation on the ground, how aware they are of the true situation, etc.
One way you can evaluate is the frequency of such posts. Were they extremely rare in 2003-2006 and suddenly there's a spike of such posts after the Anbar disaster, the surge, and scuttlebutt getting around that this Petraeus guy is much more Patton than McClellan? I have no idea what the stats are on that, but I am offering it as a potentially reliable gauge for judging the authenticity of such posts in general, if not individually.