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Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is at it again. Qatar's ruler has been trying to get Jabhat al-Nusra off America's infamous "terrorist" list once more - and calculating that the institutional memory of the world's media is that of a street dog. He's right.
Last year, Tamim's Al Jazeera satellite channel produced a tiresome two-part interview with Mohamed al-Julani, Nusra's CEO, in which the poor man boasted that he had absolutely nothing against Christians, Alawites or Americans. Nusra just wanted to get rid of that pesky Assad chappy in Damascus, he told the world, along with Assad's Russki friends. Syrian Christians to Lebanon and Syrian Alawites to the grave? Nonsense. That was the claptrap peddled by the rotten, horrid Isis of which the Saudis were so enamoured.
Then in May this year, ol' Doc Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's luckless successor, told Mohamed al-Julani that he could dissociate himself from the original al-Qaeda. Bingo. The split cometh. America's enemies were breaking apart.
Nusra would be the new "moderates", worthy of America's backing, certainly of Britain's - whose then-Prime Minister, David Cameron, had invented 70,000 "moderate" Syrian rebels for the world to support against Assad.
And now, wearingly, we are being served up the same old cocktail again. Claiming that he is giving his first ever recorded message - a palpable nonsense since al-Julani had bored us all last year with the same stuff -
the BBC told its audience that "Syria Nusra Front announces split with al-Qaeda". And yet again, we were treated to al-Julani distancing himself from al-Qaeda and telling us that Nusra is now changing its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (Front for the Liberation of the Levant).
Comment: Following the Nazi model: Adolph Hitler: Vegetarian, teetotaler, anti-smoking campaigner
See also: Let's All Light Up!