Billmon, as usual, has a great analysis on the recent announcement by al Qaeda that they are supporting Hamas and Hezbollah in fighting Israel. This really is news because, while most Americans have zero idea of the huge differences between these groups, they really don't like each other much.

Leave to Bush to be the great "uniter".

Or is he?

Billmon:

Al Qaeda, after all, is unlikely to take a loss of status lying down. Indeed, the rise of Hezbollah makes it all the more likely that Al Qaeda will soon seek to reassert itself through increased attacks on Shiites in Iraq and on Westerners all over the world -- whatever it needs to do in order to regain the title of true defender of Islam.

Ok. Let me get this straight.

The Sunni al Qaeda unites with the Shiite Hezbollah against the infidels, but al Qaeda is really just trying to get a piece of the action in Hezbollah's so-far successful campaign with Israel? Put another way, we've passed the "unite against the enemy phase" and are slowing moving into the "the victors now fight over the carcass" phase? I guess losing in Iraq, which pits the winners against each other is one way to stop fundamentalism??

I think I have a headache.

No matter the serpentine politics. One thing is crystal clear. The Bush administration has single-handedly been able to give the radical Arab world something that no amount of fighting or terrorism has been able to provide.

Serious status.

By actually being worse than the terrorist in international behavior, Bush has provided the opening for a burgeoning movement of Islamic fundamentalism in the middle east. It's a fractious movement. And make no mistake. We'll all pay a price before it burns itself out.