Zawahiri-Zarqawi Letter a Forgery?

Juan Cole suggests that the recently released letter from Zawahiri to Zarqawi may be a forgery (a pdf of the letter can be obtained here). He adds another thought here.

I would not be surprised if the letter was fake, as I have said before, partly because the letter reads a little too close to the Bush administration line; that is, it reveals Al Qaeda's goals to be exactly what would be the most convenient for Bush to have them be, overall, it dovetails a little too nicely with what the administration is saying, much like the memo from last year where Zarqawi claimed he was being "suffocated".

(Considering that the insurgency has lived on for more than a year and a half, even if the memo was authentic I would question the reliability of any assessment of the state of the insurgency made by Zarqawi, and by extension be at least a little skeptical of any asssessment made by any Al Qaeda member).

I should immediately point out that Al Qaeda's claims that the letter was forged do not influence my opinion one way or the other, because there is no reason to assume that Al Qaeda would be truthful about whether or not it wrote a letter. On the other hand, that they are liars and that they say that the letter is a fake does not necessarily mean that it is a fake, they could be telling the truth incidentally.

In any case, if the letter is forged it does not necessarily point to the Bush administration, Juan Cole points out that Iran or some Shiite Iraqis might have reason to forge such a letter in order to manipulate the U.S.

Another objection to the authenticity of the letter is raised here, namely that in one passage Zawahiri seems to be referring to Zarqawi as a third person rather than as the recipient of the letter, but it does not seem to amount to anything to me. At most it would suggest that the intelligence community has misinterpreted to whom the letter was addressed but it too stubborn to admit it, or that Zawahiri made a mistake when writing or dictating the letter, or that someone made a mistake during some transcription step. It does not strike me as the type of mistake that a forger would be more likely to make than the actual writer of a letter, and so really is not particularly relevant to the letter's authenticity.

In any case, I usually prefer to look at the overall facts on the ground in determining the situation in Iraq, and try not to attach too much importance to any one letter or any single anecdote.

That is all.