Daily Kos

Zarqawi escapes to Bagdhad.

by Eternal Hope

Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 09:46:20 PM PDT

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/12/16/iraq.main/index.html

Zarqawi has escaped to Bagdhad, according to US officials and CNN. If this is true, then that means this is the second time they have let him escape. The US also failed to capture Bin Laden as well.

The more I read about this, the more I think this has a Keystone Cops aura about it. The US had a chance to capture Bin Laden and failed. They had a chance to take out Zarqawi before the war and failed to do so. And now, they have let him escape Fallujah.

CNN is trying to put their best face on the matter, claiming that Zarqawi has reduced his ability to launch attacks. But that is simply spin, as the fact that the attacks on US forces have spread indicate that his ability to attack our forces has actually increased.

While CNN continues to spin, Zarqawi's (or the insurgents if you think he doesn't exist) operations continue unabated. In the same article:

The Italian Foreign Ministry said Thursday it is investigating a report that an Italian was abducted and killed in Iraq, cautioning that "nothing has been confirmed." The ministry said The Associated Press contacted it after a photographer in Iraq claimed insurgents showed him the body of a man killed in Iraq with papers identifying him as Salvatore Santoro, 52, of Italy. The government said Santoro previously contacted the Italian Embassy in Lebanon and said he was going to Iraq with a British humanitarian aid company.

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Permalink | 37 comments

  •  Tip jar. (4.00 / 8)

    Conservatism is Dead!

    by Eternal Hope on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 09:37:14 PM PDT

  •  You Can't Capture (none / 1)

    a myth.  Especially an ill thought out one cooked up by "our" side.

    You can't always tell the truth because you don't always know the truth - but you can ALWAYS be honest.

    by mattman on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 09:44:05 PM PDT

  •  yeah (none / 1)

    read that stupid CNN "he's not able to be successful in the same way".... though he might be succeeding in a different way.

    Squeeze that lemon!

    Rome wasn't burnt in a day.

    by Miss Devore on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 09:45:29 PM PDT

  •  First he loses a leg... (none / 0)

    ...then he dies....then he rises from the grave with both legs and takes the reigns.

    Pretty impressive for a man that's not even on the FBI's most wanted list.  Until they put out inconclusive proof of Zarqawi, I might as well right him off as an Emmanuel Goldstein, and I hate thinking along those lines.

    by BornUnderPunches on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 09:50:01 PM PDT

  •  Zarqawi (none / 0)

    was born with 3 legs.

    Booman Tribune

    by BooMan23 on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 09:55:44 PM PDT

  •  How the hell does CNN know where he is? (4.00 / 3)

    Do they recognize his cologne?  Honestly...

    Show of hands... who would join Kucinich's effort to impeach VP Cheney?

    by Mogolori on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 09:56:45 PM PDT

  •  Scott Ritter, (4.00 / 2)

    The correctest guy on the planet when it comes to things Iraqi in recent years, seems to have sources that claim that Zarqawi is/was a super-duper small time tool.

    That the Muqbharat (Baath Secret Police) prepared for the insurgency well in advance, and one of the tools they prepared was Zarqawi as a means to deflect anger away from the Baathists who were then running the insurgency and to ignite religious AND nationalist fervor.

    Ritter seems to think that Zarqawi may be a kind of Frankenstein's monster - that the Muqbharat thinks they are using him, but now the tide is turning and that he is using them...

    They seek him here,
    They seek him there,
    From London town,
    to Leicester Square.

    One wee he's in polka dots
    the next week he's in stripes
    Cause he's a
    Dedicated follower of fashion...

    The only way to ensure a free press is to own one

    by RedDan on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 10:05:59 PM PDT

  •  Zarqawi (4.00 / 5)

    [In 2002, Bush administration officials said, Zarqawi went to Baghdad to have one leg amputated after having been wounded by a U.S. bombing attack. That account has turned out to be wrong, according to U.S. intelligence officials who have interrogated Zarqawi associates.

    "It was for another ailment, but not his leg," one intelligence official said yesterday. "We are still learning about him," this official added.] Washington Post 10/21/04

    The Associated Press
    Updated: 6:31 a.m. ET March 04, 2004

    BAGHDAD, Iraq - A Jordanian extremist suspected of bloody suicide attacks in Iraq was killed some time ago in U.S. bombing and a letter outlining plans for fomenting sectarian war is a forgery, a statement allegedly from an insurgent group west of the capital said.

    Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in the Sulaimaniyah mountains of northern Iraq "during the American bombing there," according to a statement circulated in Fallujah this week and signed by the "Leadership of the Allahu Akbar Mujahedeen."

    There was no way to verify the authenticity of the statement, one of many leaflets put out by a variety of groups taking part in the anti-U.S. resistance.

    The statement did not say when al-Zarqawi was supposedly killed, but U.S. jets bombed strongholds of the extremist Ansar al-Islam in the north last April as Saddam Hussein's regime was collapsing.

    It said al-Zarqawi was unable to escape the bombing because of his artificial leg.

    See this for details on the Zarqawi myth

    Booman Tribune

    by BooMan23 on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 10:06:45 PM PDT

  •  Don't you just hate that (4.00 / 3)

    when  CNN reports obviously classified information. Dagnabbit, now he'll get away again.

    "The more they spoke of honor, the more I checked my wallet."

    by bankbane on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 10:13:49 PM PDT

  •  I had read once in the International press that (none / 1)

    Zarqawi doesn't really exist and that he is simply a composite cooked up by US intelligence.  I've always been inclined to believe it, but there are a number of authentic videos of attacks in Iraq which appear to have his signature.  I find it doubtful that he would be hanging around Iraq though.  I'd think he could phone or message in an attack from across the Iranian border (assuming he does exist).  After all, he's not the one blowing up himself.  He gets underlings to do it and pays off their families.

    Alternative rock with something to say: http://www.myspace.com/globalshakedown

    by khyber900 on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 10:17:38 PM PDT

  •  damn that snowball! (none / 0)

    or is it goldstein? i can't keep it all straight.

    surf putah, your friendly neighborhood central valley samizdat

    by wu ming on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 10:21:02 PM PDT

  •  911-iraq connection (4.00 / 3)

    started the day of the attacks. the mohammed atta prague story got repeated play on all the networks, and the anthrax attacks cemented the whole myth, since as we all know saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and funded terrorists, and could strike us at any moment.

    the fix was in from the beginning.

    surf putah, your friendly neighborhood central valley samizdat

    by wu ming on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 10:23:20 PM PDT

  •  Sounds Rovian to me. (none / 0)

    I suggest they knew of his existance early and then gradually seeped that intel into the media. The idea being, to generate fear in time for the elections.  

    Conservatism is Dead!

    by Eternal Hope on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 10:27:48 PM PDT

  •  The administration was concerned about... (none / 0)

    ...both Iraq and Afghanistan before 9/11.  They started dropping Iraq's name a few days after 9/11 if I remember correctly.

    Osama's name was mentioned on 9/11.  Not shabby considering the man didn't officially lay claim for the attacks until this year.

    They were dropping Afghanistan's name in March of 2001.

    NewsInsight

     Janes Defense

    BBC

    by BornUnderPunches on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 10:28:03 PM PDT

  •  If Zarqawi escaped again... (none / 0)

    ...that is one more reason why Rumsfeld should resign.

    Conservatism is Dead!

    by Eternal Hope on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 10:33:48 PM PDT

  •  Two theories of Zarqawi (4.00 / 3)

    Scott Ritter's somewhat confused take on Zarqawi

    How US fuelled myth of Zarqawi the mastermind
    By Adrian Blomfield outside Fallujah
    (Filed: 04/10/2004)

    Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader believed to be responsible for the abduction of Kenneth Bigley, is 'more myth than man', according to American military intelligence agents in Iraq.

    Several sources said the importance of Zarqawi, blamed for many of the most spectacular acts of violence in Iraq, has been exaggerated by flawed intelligence and the Bush administration's desire to find "a villain" for the post-invasion mayhem.

    Zarqawi fuels his ambition with the release of a video of the beheading of Nick Berg
    US military intelligence agents in Iraq have revealed a series of botched and often tawdry dealings with unreliable sources who, in the words of one source, "told us what we wanted to hear".

    "We were basically paying up to $10,000 a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq," the agent said.

    "Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one."

    The sprawling US intelligence community is in a state of open political warfare amid conflicting pressures from election-year politics, military combat and intelligence analysis. The Bush administration has seized on Zarqawi as the principal leader of the insurgency, mastermind of the country's worst suicide bombings and the man behind the abduction of foreign hostages. He is held up as the most tangible link to Osama bin Laden and proof of the claim that the former Iraqi regime had links to al-Qa'eda.

    However, fresh intelligence emerging from around Fallujah, the rebel-held city that is at the heart of the insurgency, suggests that, despite a high degree of fragmentation, the insurgency is led and dominated not by Arab foreigners but by members of Iraq's Sunni minority.

    Human intelligence about Zaqawi is minimal
    Pentagon estimates have put the number of foreign fighters in the region of 5,000. However, one agent said: "The overwhelming sense from the information we are now getting is that the number of foreign fighters does not exceed several hundred and is perhaps as low as 200. From the information we have gathered we have to conclude that Zarqawi is more myth than man. He isn't in the calibre of what many politicians want to believe he is.

    "At some stage, and perhaps even now, he was almost certainly behind some of the kidnappings. But if there is a main leader of the insurgency he would be an Iraqi. The insurgency, though, is not nearly so centralised to talk of a structured leadership."

    Military intelligence officials complain that their reports to Washington, are largely being ignored. They accuse the Pentagon of over-reliance on electronic surveillance and aerial and satellite reconnaissance carried out for the CIA.

    In recent weeks American military command in Iraq has claimed a series of precision air strikes on targets in Fallujah identified by the CIA as housing known associates of Zarqawi.

    It has denied that there were any civilian casualties, despite television footage showing dead and wounded women and children being pulled from the rubble of flattened homes.

    Some US military spies maintain that this is evidence of continued dependency on technology over old-fashioned human intelligence.

    Both President George W Bush and Tony Blair have, to varying degrees, conceded that intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programme was misleading. But both continue to maintain that the continued violence since Saddam was ousted is because Iraq is now the front line in the war on terrorism.

    Yet it now seems that the intelligence on which such claims are based is haphazard, scanty and contradictory.

    No concrete proof of the link between Zarqawi and bin Laden was offered until US officials this year trumpeted the discovery of a computer disk, allegedly intercepted by Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas. Among its files was an apparent draft of a letter from Zarqawi to bin Laden.

    "We will be your readied soldiers, working under your banner, complying with your orders and indeed swearing fealty to you publicly and in the news media," the letter read.

    That seemed proof enough for the US government. "Zarqawi is the best evidence of the connection to al-Qa'eda affiliates and al-Qa'eda," Mr Bush said in June.

    But senior diplomats in Baghdad claim that the letter was almost certainly a hoax. They say the two men may have met in Afghanistan but it appeared they never got on and there has been a rift for several years.

    One diplomat claimed that there was evidence to suggest that Zarqawi's aides may have passed on information to the Americans that led to the arrest of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the main planners of the September 11 attacks.

    The diplomats describe Zarqawi as deeply ambitious. His actions are aimed as much at boosting his position in the Islamic terrorist fraternity as striking at America. He achieved that in April when a grisly and apparently authentic video showing the beheading of the contractor Nick Berg. The footage was released under the title "Sheikh Abu Musab Zarqawi executes an American with his own hands and promises Bush more".

    A diplomat commented: "That catapaulted Zarqawi to exactly where he wanted to be - giving Osama a run for his money as US public enemy number one. But, the video apart, intelligence on the Jordanian is thin.

    Intelligence reports are contradictory even on whether he is missing a leg.

    Initial claims of a Long John Silver character with an artificial leg were disputed by more recent alleged sightings of the 38-year-old apparently fully limbed and looking rather sprightly.

    A campaign to reclaim rebel-held areas before next year's Iraqi elections claimed its first success yesterday.

    The US army said 3,000 of its troops backed by 2,000 Iraqis dislodged around 1,000 insurgents from Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, in the "Sunni triangle". It said 15 of about 150 killed were civilians.

    Iraqi religious leaders said other towns would not fall so easily.

    [my take it closer to Richard Perle's Telegraph than Scott Ritter's.  I think the US is the creator of the myth, not Ba'athists]

    Booman Tribune

    by BooMan23 on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 10:37:28 PM PDT

    •  US certainly focused on Zarqawi (none / 1)

      Blame on 'foreign insurgents' in Fallujah, from recent accounts only 2% of fighters were foreign. Zarqawi has an OBL ransom on his head, once again after start of war the target was Saddam & sons. Recall after capture of Saddam Hussein, all documents showed SH was leading the insurgency. However, as the attacks increased Zarqawi was chosen as the new mastermind.

      Truth is, Zarqawi is responsible for the first and most brutal beheadings as video has evidenced.

      Scott Ritter has a very valid viewpoint on Iraq, certainly more trustworthy than any US official in Iraq and Washington. To obscure one's failures, you make the enemy larger than life.

      Jordan Times: Zarqawi -- terror mastermind or bogeyman?

      Born a Liberal, voting Liberal, dying as a Liberal: á la Vie á la Mort

      NEW DIARY - PROPAG - GOPUSA in Texas & UA Richard Powell Investigated

      by creve coeur on Fri Dec 17, 2004 at 12:59:29 AM PDT

      [ Parent ]

  •  Check the Rotten.com Bio (4.00 / 2)

    I did a bit of a search to see how Zarqawi came up, and I think that the main tool they used to get him into the mainstream was based on the claim "Bush could have killed Zarqawi 3 times" immediately after blasts killing 143 were allegedly masterminded by him.  Prior to this, Zarqawi was part of a plot to stage attacks in Jordan during the millenium celebrations, and was named as the key connection by Colin Powell in his UN speech.

    After this, Zarqawi was much busier, being named as a chief suspect by the pro-Bush Aznar government of Spain in the 3/11 attacks and being associated with the Nick Berg video in May.

    The Rotten.com bio of Zarqawi (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/3/3/029/93778) is very intriguing, and much better than that in the media.

    by Power on Thu Dec 16, 2004 at 11:16:40 PM PDT

  •  what? (none / 0)

    cia operative zarqawi has escaped to baghdad?

    figment of bush's imagination zarqawi has escaped to baghdad?

    favorite press bogeyman zarqawi has escaped to baghdad?

    well, what else would you expect? you don't mess with your best friends, do you?

    Ding, dong, the witch is dead.

    by RabidNation on Fri Dec 17, 2004 at 03:06:52 AM PDT

  •  Bunch of crap... (none / 0)

    Even if Zarqawi exists, no one has a clue where he is.  And the reality is he has almost no impact on the situation over in Iraq.  There's no single mastermind that's coordinating the resistance, it's a bunch of loosely linked or entirely independent groups.  This focusing so much on one man is just a clear example of one reason why we are losing (the others being extreme incompetence, and the whole futility of the situation considering the native populace has turned against us).  

    Don't like XOM and OPEC? What have YOU done to reduce your oil consumption? Hot air does NOT constitute a renewable resource!

    by Asak on Fri Dec 17, 2004 at 03:46:09 AM PDT

    •  Delusion (none / 1)

      This is the reason why the US/CNN are pushing this guy so much.  They want Zarqawi to exist.  They need him to exist.  Because that means there is a central mastermind to all the resistance, which implies that it is not as widespread and general as it is, and that it can possibly be struck down once... um, once the head is chopped off (I've heard that somewhere...).

      It is, from where I'm sitting, delusional.

      by lennywick on Fri Dec 17, 2004 at 06:10:48 AM PDT

      [ Parent ]

      •  But that's not how guerilla wars are fought. (none / 0)

        Guerilla warriors do not have a centralized command and control structure. They normally have small groups of maybe 10-100 fighters spread all over Iraq. Each group does not normally know what the other groups are doing so that if they are arrested, the US can't figure out where the other groups are even if they use torture.

        And many times, guerilla warriors will shoot at our troops and then go back to their homes and live normal lives. If you saw the Nightline episode where they interviewed the ex-VC fighters, they went back to living their normal lives once the fighting was over. Many of them were still there in 2004.

        Conservatism is Dead!

        by Eternal Hope on Fri Dec 17, 2004 at 09:40:49 AM PDT

        [ Parent ]

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