The "Atiyah letter," which was translated by the U.S. military's Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, also stressed the vulnerability of al-Qaeda's position in Iraq.
"Know that we, like all mujahaddin, are still weak," Atiyah told Zarqawi. "We have not yet reached a level of stability. We have no alternative but to not squander any element of the foundations of strength or any helper or supporter."
Indeed, the "Atiyah" and "Zawahiri" letters suggest that one of al-Qaeda's biggest fears is that the United States will pull out of Iraq before the terrorist organization has built the necessary political infrastructure to turn the country into a future base of operations.
Zawahiri was so concerned about the possibility of mass desertions after a U.S. withdrawal that he suggested that al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq talk up the "idea" of a "caliphate" along the eastern Mediterranean to avert a disintegration of the force.
Even with these two fretful al-Qaeda letters in hand, Bush continued to warn Americans about al-Qaeda's intent to follow up a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq by turning the country into a launching pad for a vast Islamic "empire" that would spell the strategic defeat of the United States.
In a Sept. 5, 2006, speech, Bush declared, "This caliphate would be a totalitarian Islamic empire encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia," Bush said. "We know this because al-Qaeda has told us."
Bush returned to this theme in his Oct. 11 news conference. His administration's "strategic goal is to help this young democracy [Iraq] succeed in a world in which extremists are trying to intimidate rational people in order to topple moderate governments and to extend the caliphate," Bush said. "They want to extend an ideological caliphate that has no concept of liberty inherent in their beliefs."
But - like much of Bush's world - al-Qaeda's "caliphate" doesn't really exist. Indeed, before the Bush administration took power in 2001, Islamic extremists had been routed across the Arab world, from Algeria to Egypt to Jordan to Saudi Arabia - explaining why so many al-Qaeda leaders were exiles holed up in caves in Afghanistan.
Plus, given the strife between Sunni and Shiite sects, it's hard to conceive how a unified global Islamic "caliphate" would be imaginable. Most likely, if the U.S. government dealt with Muslims with greater sophistication, they would take care of al-Qaeda and similar extremists like they did before.
In Bush's world, however, the "caliphate" is not just a ploy by al-Qaeda leaders to keep impressionable young jihadists in line; it is an entity that would be "extended" if U.S. forces withdraw from Iraq.
So, as he rationalizes the horrendous death toll in Iraq - estimated at about 655,000 dead by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health - Bush doesn't see a disaster of historic proportions. In his world, the bloodshed is simply another reaffirmation of his decision to invade.
"I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence," Bush said. "I am amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they're willing to - that there's a level of violence that they tolerate."
It's difficult to envision any rational person making such a statement. If anything, the level of killing in Iraq is a combination of sectarian violence and the determination of many Iraqis to drive out what they see as the American invaders. But in Bush world, such realities never intrude.
Still, perhaps, the greatest danger from Bush's delusions is that they will come to supplant any American notion of reality and spell the doom of the United States as a democratic Republic based on an informed electorate.
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