I don't know of any polls of al Qaeda, I'm pretty sure there aren't any, but...

Do you have to have statistics to believe something?

Do you need to have someone go out in the forest and take pictures of bears defecating there before you would make the assumption that bears shit in the woods?

Refute these points, if you will:

1. The US was and is very strongly disliked by a significant percentage of the population of Middle Eastern countries. One could say "hated" would apply to many.

2. The US invaded Iraq, a Middle Eastern country.

3. A large number of Iraqi citizens were killed or injured as a direct result of this invasion. Some of these people were soldiers, insurgents, freedom fighters, terrorists. Some of them were completely innocent civilians.

4. As a rule, people don't like it when loved ones get killed or injured. Generally, they also don't like it when it happens to fellow citizens they don't know. (Some people even get upset when people from other countries die unnecessarily.)

5. There are a number of people in the Middle East who feel strongly enough about the invasion to blow themselves and/or others up.

6. If someone feels extreme anger towards a particular group and is otherwise powerless to exress that anger, they might express it in the form of violence towards the group in question.

7. There are about 25 million people in Iraq.

Given the above points, is it not logical to assume that a significant portion of those people might possibly be persuaded to participate in violence against the US? What, maybe 1/100th of one percent, one out of every ten thousand. That would be... let's see... 2,500 new terrorists.

Or try this: say Lithuania invaded the United States and was occupying it, in a position of overwhelming military strength. What percentage of Americans would rise up and fight against them?