In insult to al Qaeda leader reward is lowered

AP/Washington Times:

The Bush administration has slashed its reward for the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq from $5 million to $100,000 because it feels he's lost effectiveness and is no longer worth such a steep price, officials said yesterday.

Over the course of the past year, the government first reduced the bounty for Abu Ayyub al-Masri from $5 million to $1 million and then removed him entirely from the State Department's Rewards for Justice Program, which pays tipsters for information leading to the death or arrest and conviction of wanted terrorists, the officials said.

Information on al-Masri is now worth only up to $100,000 under a separate and less well-known rewards program run by the Defense Department, which asked that he be taken off the State Department list, they said.

Capt. Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said, "The value of this guy is not what it was, say, at this time last year."

"Our assessment has led us to believe he's not as effective a leader on the battlefield ... and because of that, he's just not as valuable to us," Capt. Graybeal said from the command's headquarters in Tampa, Fla.

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I don't know if they are playing mind games with this guy or not. Obviously, he is not in as strong a position as he was last year when the Democrats were ready to hand the country to him. Right now he is too busy trying to survive to be that much of a threat.