As far as philosophies go, I think they're a bit different. Both go for violence quickly and easily to achieve ends. But endorsements are more about who can be more helpful.

Password protected Al Qaeda websites which disseminate the groups propaganda carry this message. 4 more years of a president blind to nuance in the Muslim worldwouild be a boon for Al Qaeda recruiting, and a tragedy for Americans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/op...rssnyt&emc=rss

John McCain isn’t boasting about a new endorsement, one of the very, very few he has received from overseas. It came a few days ago:

“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.

The endorsement left the McCain campaign sputtering, and noting helplessly that Hamas appears to prefer Barack Obama. Al Qaeda’s apparent enthusiasm for Mr. McCain is manifestly not reciprocated.

“The transcendent challenge of our time [is] the threat of radical Islamic terrorism,” Senator McCain said in a major foreign policy speech this year, adding, “Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House.”

That’s a widespread conservative belief. Mitt Romney compared the threat of militant Islam to that from Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Some conservative groups even marked “Islamofascism Awareness Week” earlier this month.

Yet the endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Joseph Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him.

“From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is best for recruiting,” said Professor Nye, adding that Mr. McCain is far more likely to continue those policies.

An American president who keeps troops in Iraq indefinitely, fulminates about Islamic terrorism, inclines toward military solutions and antagonizes other nations is an excellent recruiting tool. In contrast, an African-American president with a Muslim grandfather and a penchant for building bridges rather than blowing them up would give Al Qaeda recruiters fits.

During the cold war, the American ideological fear of communism led us to mistake every muddle-headed leftist for a Soviet pawn. Our myopia helped lead to catastrophe in Vietnam.

In the same way today, an exaggerated fear of “Islamofascism” elides a complex reality and leads us to overreact and damage our own interests. Perhaps the best example is one of the least-known failures in Bush administration foreign policy: Somalia. Read on using the link...

Why is it that every time one of these stories comes up, one has to wonder about the motives behind the information. News doesn’t seem to be news anymore. Its for this reason that I can never just read one news website and take it for fact nowadays.

On that note, that article came from the New York Times. You would sooner get a more unbiased news story for a pro-democratic party editorial by Rush Limbaugh. Though the information may be partially correct, the spin is most assuredly one sided.

As for the endorsement... McCain also got an endorsement from Heidi Montag and I don’t hear her name all over the news. Consequently, Lindsey Lohan is all for Obama, who subsequently refused the endorsement. Coincidence to foreign policy…. I think so.

This just seems like another attempt to bash Bush while the there is still time to do it using uneducated notions of factionalization between the parties. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson are spinning in their graves right now. Personally, I think this endorsement has to do with oil and big corporations, but then who knows…

Also, and on an ironic note;

The Somalian tinderbox was lit by the Clinton administration in '93. Bush senior only went as far as food aid. If Bush junior did do anything... it would have been throwing a match into an already burning furnace.

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"With prudence the philosopher approves or blames. If errors triumph, he departs and waits"- Pythagoras (F.13 GVP 174)

Ain't that the truth.

You're right that most media outlets are untrustworthy regards unbiased news. As you point out, that's not new- the election of 1800 was probably just as if not more polarized (though I doubt the word existed then).

A Very Good historical counterpoint about Somalia. Totally factually correct. And further, it was Clinton's image of weakness or ineptness there as well as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that helped encourage Al Qaeda to declare war in 1996. Then, after the 1998 embassy bombings & 2000 USS Cole, with no meaningful response from Clinton, the terrorists likely recruited more successfully & became even more ambitious-2001 A Terrorism Odyssey.

Times change. Now, a Democrat fuzzy on military thinking & strong on international support would be a disaster for them- the opposite of the 1990's.

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Whether there is any truth behind this story or not:

If I where an al Qaeda decision maker and reasonably versed in Machiavellian politics I would like to see McCain in the white house.
I would also be very, very careful about keeping that a secret. Official endorsements would be counter productive.