If you could pose a question to al Qaida's No. 2 leader, what would you ask?

Do you consider the killing of women and children to be jihad?

What is it that makes legitimate the spilling of the blood of even one Muslim?

Don't you think that al Qaida provides great services in ways it could never imagine to American intelligence by deeming permissable the blood of Muslims in the states of the Arab world?

Where is the jihadi action against the usurping Jews in Palestine?

Why haven't we heard you attack Iran in the same way that you attack other states of the East and West?

What do you expect to happen in Iraq after America's withdrawal?

When will there be a wing of the organization in Egypt. And if it is actually there, how can one join the caravan?

What is al Qaida's position vis-a-vis Egypt, in which the dogs of Mubarak rule tyranically and which has been misplaced by the defeatist ideology of the Muslim Brothers, and whose youth are eager for sacrifice and the beginning of a new round against the regime?

What is your stance towards the Shiite laity in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Azerbaijan and the Gulf states?

The defeat of the Americans began in Kabul, and is passing by Baghdad today, so where will it end?

The Egyptian physician-turned-militant Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's top deputy, answers all those queries and many more in the first installment of his answers to letters sent to al Qaida's publicity wing, Sahab Media. Download the entire first installment here.