I'm not really understanding al Qaeda's line of thinking here...
Do they REALLY think that the govts will pull out just because they have a hostage of theirs? Sorry, but even I know that the govt doesn't give a rip about the hostages.
"Oooh please don't kill the hostage. Ok, you got us. We'll pull outta the region! Sorry bout that!"
They might as well take a hostage and demand that GWB kill himself.
You figure they'd be smarter about it. They're just wasting their own time. Their goal is to kill americans and such... yet they waste 5 days on demands that they KNOW won't be met? Why not just kill them right off the bat? Why not just kill every american/whoever that they see? It doesn't make much sense to wait around 5 days when they could knock 'em off one by one at a faster rate.