Hey have you ever wondered something. If al-Qaeda was an interest group in the U.S., judging candidates’ fitness to govern along the lines of its preferred agenda, which presidential candidate would it endorse? In the Washington Independent, I take a closer look!

But interviews with intelligence officials and other experts on the international jihadist movement back the assessment of al-Hesbah’s anonymous extremist. “Al Qaeda would like McCain to come to power and see an extension of Bush’s policies,” said Rohan Gunaratna, head of Singapore’s International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, one of the world’s most respected anti-terrorism institutes.

“They would prefer a McCain victory,” agreed Paul Pillar, a former lead analyst at the CIA’s counterterrorism center and the intelligence community’s chief Mideast analyst from 2000 to 2005.

 Yeah I guess you saw that coming.