From inside the Beltway:
By Gerald: Internet Anthropologist Think Tank.
Aug 20. 08

al Qaeda's end nears: Rewards being considered, offers made.

Chatted with a reliable contact: Z is listed as probable and likely degraded, waiting for confirmation. Z's wife/family are not talking or knowledgeable of his status, only that he has been out of touch with them for some time, which is not unusual.

Gadahn is now on "Not Wanted" status.

FYI: Pakistan and Afghanistan are now referred to as only "Stan". Both are considered a common theater of operations.

Musharraf is staying at Army House in Rawalpindi, then off to Saudi Arabia, then the US, possibly for good.

Also, UK's SBS and SAS are fully committed to Stan: we have lots of teams there also: mission is solely AQ C&C decapitation, full Paki cooperation.

You heard it at Internet Anthropologist Think Tank first.

We have been reporting Big Z as dead, will look up post, and Gadahn as captured.

Rest of message is classified.

But its all good news.

Gerald

Just in:

New Al Qaeda Message Confirms Head of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan Still Alive

By Andrew Cochran

The SITE Intelligence Group has issued a press release that a new speech is forthcoming from Al Qaeda's #2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, containing eulogies for two recently killed Al Qaeda commanders, Abu Khabab al-Masri (a.k.a. Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar) and Abu Abdullah al-Shami, an escapee from Bagram prison in July 2005 and killed last month in a U.S. strike. I posted about al-Masri's reported death on July 28, and Evan Kohlmann posted the NEFA Foundation's transcript of Al Qaeda's acknowledgement of that on August 6.

The value of this message is that it is final confirmation that the head of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, was not killed in a Pakistani strike as reported on August 12, as deduced by his signature on this message and his exclusion from the names of the eulogized. The American intel community never supported that report, as I noted in the update to my post.