Al Qaeda hoax?

The latest message from Al Qaeda appears to be a hoax.

Such, at least, is the provisional judgment of Juan Cole, who is not known for conclusion-hopping. The most obvious giveaway: The letter uses the term "Imam" in a robustly Shiite fashion, even thought he purported author is a hard-core Sunni.

Suppose you saw a letter attributed to a well-known evangelical Christian. Suppose this letter referred to Pat Robertson as "Father Robertson." You'd suspect that something was amiss, would you not?

Cole:

The letter then says how much Zawahiri misses meeting with Zarqawi. Zarqawi was not part of al-Qaeda when he was in Afghanistan. He had a rivalry with it. And when he went back to Jordan he did not allow the Jordanian and German chapters of his Tawhid wa Jihad group to send money to Bin Laden. If Zawahiri was going to bring up old times, he would have had to find a way to get past this troubled history, not just pretend that the two used to pal around.

The letter also refers to the need to win the "hearts and minds" of Islamic peoples. That was an oft-heard phrase in America during the Vietnam era. I wonder how often Arabs use the term "hearts and minds"?

So far, Cole's skepticism has not been echoed by the mainstream media, with the partial exception of this Financial Times piece:

Stephen Ulph, an analyst at the US-based Jamestown Foundation, said the letter presented a number of problems. There had been no clarification as to how it was intercepted and no independent corroboration of its authenticity. He also found it remarkable that a letter between two al-Qaeda leaders should spell out strategy in such an explanatory way, as if these basic details were the subject of doubt.

If the thing's a fake, what's the motive? The letter discusses the likelihood that American troops will withdraw soon, creating a power vaccuum in Iraq -- one which Al Qaeda would be well-poised to exploit.

Many voices now call for an immediate pull-out. Bush-friendly forces have good reason to remind the public that a pull-out might strengthen Al Qaeda's stance in that nation.

Of course, what really helped Osama & co. was the invasion. I have no doubt that pulling out will make the situation worse. I also have no doubt that staying in that country will make the situation worse.

As for the letter: If this one's fake, what conclusions should we reach about the authenticity of any given terrorist communication?