By God, the one and only God, you (will?) ask about what happened to us, because you didn't ask about the situation of the immigrants. ... But morale is weakening and there is (unclear word: either "exhaustion" or "confusion") among the ranks of the mujahedeen, and some of the brother emirs are discriminating among them. God does not accept such actions. ...
We should pay attention when we get a chance to hear their gripes.
Back in November, when a tape by Zarqawi surfaced that indicated he was having problems, I wrote about how we fight with an information imbalance. We see every friendly casualty and read about every problem or gripe on our side. Our enemy seems like a nameless, powerful enemy without weakness who is everywhere:
The enemy dies, suffers, and worries out of the spotlight. While reading Rick Atkinson’s fittingly appropriately titled An Army at Dawn, I came across this quote from Kipling that illustrates the problem of looking for enemy weakness while your own are staring you in the face:
Man cannot tell but Allah knows
How much the other side is hurt.
Allah knows how much the enemy hurts. And Zarqawi’s audio tape hints that he knows how much his thugs are hurt. The other side is hurt. Remember that.
