BE CAREFUL WHEN PICKING YOUR OWN NICKNAME

Interviewed last night on Lateline, Al Qaeda training camp graduate "Jihad" Jack Thomas's brother claims Jack has been targeted by the government and media:

LES THOMAS: It's an unfortunate fact that there have been so many untruths, insinuations, and outright lies printed about my brother that it's just probably going to be impossible to combat them in a single lifetime. We've done what we can. I mean, even in tonight's intro, you're still using the Jihad Jack tag, which has been a very effective smear and obviously ...

TONY JONES: I have to say, just to interrupt you there, Les Thomas, that he actually made that up himself. He called himself jihad, didn't he?

LES THOMAS: He actually adopted the name jihad in the sense of inner striving and spiritual struggle. The Jihad Jack alliteration was actually a media idea and obviously it buys into all kinds of Western conceptions about the term 'jihad'.

And here I was thinking al Qaeda jihad training camps were about learning to use guns, explosives and the like. Silly me.

Les and Jack Thomas need to work on coordinating their stories. Here's Les on Jack's questionable friends:

LES THOMAS: The only tenuous connection that I know of relating to Abu Bakar Bashir is the fact that Mariati, Jack's wife, went to school with a woman who later went on to marry him.

Here's Jack:

INTERVIEWER: Why did Abu Bakar Bashir come to meet you?

JACK THOMAS: He's a family friend.

Read the two Lateline interviews (here and here) and decide if you'd be happy with Jack living next door.