Just when I was ready to give them credit for good reporting on Iraq, ABC news is leading with the Pentagon
upping the reward for Zarqawi to $25 million dollars on par with OBL. This revelation is offered up as a special investigative report from Pentagon correspondent Martha Raddatz. Sad that World News Tonight would treat the spoon feeding of the next piece, of Bushco's new Iraq PR blitz, as a scoop.
The report, remarkably titled Enemy No. 1, is focused on demonstrating that it is really Zarqawi who is the major threat.
U.S. officials believe that bin Laden is still the greatest threat to the United States, but say they are now convinced that Zarqawi has global capability to match anyone's. U.S. intelligence officials say they have tracked Zarqawi cells operating not only in Iraq, but in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Turkey, Kuwait, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The pentagon sources put Zarqawi in Fallujah during the battle there and then in Baghdad for the beheading of Nick Berg. No discussion of what Zarqawi would have been doing with the Hussein loyalists arrested in connection with that case. Then in the big wind up Zarqawi gets credit for attacks previously attributed to Al-Qaeda and to attempted attacks directly on the US.
Intelligence officials have already tied Zarqawi to dozens of attacks worldwide, including the al Qaeda-linked suicide attacks in Istanbul, last year's bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, as well as attacks on the Jordanian Embassy in Baghdad. In an intercepted letter that Zarqawi is believed to have authored, he claims credit for at least 25 attacks in Iraq alone.
But an intelligence official told ABC News the Jordanian-born terrorist was also involved in plans to attack much closer to home.
According to the official, Zarqawi had direct ties to the millennium bombing plot of December 1999 to blow up buildings in Jordan, Israel and the United States. The group leader of the millennium plot was said to be acting on direct orders from Zarqawi.
The timing of this is impeccable. The White House telegraphed that yesterday was the start of its new PR offensive. Rove seeks help in the one area where Bush's polling numbers are still above water. And now here is the pentagon to reminds us that Iraq is the frontline of the WOT, while other sources have let it be known that a terror attack might be coming this summer as reported by Fox and CNN.
I'm sure we'll be hearing more scoops throughout the drive to "sovereignty".