"Al-Qaida is not only operating in Iraq against coalition forces, it is preparing for the next stage of guerrilla warfare: winning the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqi Sunnis and wearing down the will of the American public," according to the [1] Jerusalem Post.

How will they win these hearts and minds? By appealing to their Islamic loyalty. The article quotes Peter Bergen, identified as "an al-Qaida expert": "In the three most recent Osama bin Laden video cassettes, he refers repeatedly to Iraq."

The article continues:

The support is not only rhetorical. Bergen added that Dr. Saad al-Fagih, a London-based Saudi radical, told him that, in June and July, 3,000 Saudis went to fight in Iraq – just as many Arab volunteers once streamed into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. 'For them, as well as many others in the Muslim world, fighting in Iraq is the classical defensive jihad,' he said."

I give example after example of Muslim clerics defining the war in Iraq as a defensive jihad as early as last winter in [2] Onward Muslim Soldiers.