Job Application from Hell

Michelle Malkin obtained a copy of a mujahid "data form" that was apparently filled out by Jose Padilla, aka Abu Abdullah Al Mujahir, in 2000 when he arrived in Afghanistan.  Think of it as a job application for joining the  jihad.  What a remarkable little document!  It says more about pre-9/11 Al Qaeda than what you may expect.

The Miami Herald reporter, Jay Weaver, scoffs and sneers through an entire article about the application, using the word "alleged" six  times to describe the application.  So many times, as a matter of fact, that you may wonder whether the document even exists:

After the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan to oust its Taliban rulers, authorities found a locker full of applications to join al Qaeda's holy war overseas.

Among the alleged applicants: José Padilla, the former ''enemy combatant'' who once lived in Broward County.

A prosecutor produced the alleged document for the first time Thursday in Miami federal court, where Padilla pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges that he was a recruit for a North American terrorist cell with South Florida links that aided Islamic jihad abroad.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Garber denied bond for Padilla, who had been held in military detention for about four years before his transfer to Miami to face a criminal indictment.

''It was recovered by U.S. personnel in late 2001 after the United States began bombing Afghanistan,'' Justice Department lawyer Stephanie Pell said, referring to Padilla's alleged al Qaeda application.

She added it was found among 80 to 100 other mujahadeen (holy warrior) applications found in the country, which harbored al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden before he masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. terrorist attacks.

''Several links in this case prove this is his document,'' Pell said after submitting it at Padilla's bond hearing.

Pell said Padilla's July 24, 2000, application was authenticated by a ''cooperating government witness'' convicted in an unrelated case who had once filled out the same Arabic ''mujahadeen data form.'' She said Padilla's date of birth, Oct. 18, 1970, was on his application along with his adopted Muslim name, Abu Abdullah Al Mujahir.

She said his co-conspirators and others called him ''The Puerto Rican,'' a reference to the American-born Padilla's Hispanic heritage.

Padilla's attorney, Michael Caruso, questioned the authenticity of Padilla's alleged mujahadeen application, saying there was ''no direct evidence'' he filled out the form.

"Direct evidence" is easy to obtain through handwriting analysis.  That's nothing.  The most important piece of information in the article is the fact that Mr. Padilla's application was "found among 80 to 100 other mujahadeen (holy warrior) applications..."  You've got to wonder whether any other Americans felt compelled to fill one out.

That the form exists at all suggests that Mr.  Padilla/Mujahir felt confident enough in his motives to identify himself with Al Qaeda's murderous, supremacist intentions.  That Al Qaeda  had developed a "personnel" bureaucracy compelling them to create a "data form" in the first place says  much about the group's proud complacency in Afghanistan. Years of operational success -- with little response from the West -- tens of thousands of recruits filing through training camps, and money flowing like water,  made Al Qaeda's leadership more complacent than they should have been.  It made them think they could get away with a day of unprecedented civilian, peacetime carnage.