Michael Isakoff and Mark Hosenball are reporting in their Terror Watch column in Newsweek that there is skepticism in the intelligence community about the claim that Abu Azzam was the No. 2 figure in the Iraqi insurgency.
"This guy was a brutal killer," Bush told reporters in remarks that were also carried live on cable TV. "He was one of [Abu Mussab al-]Zarqawi's top lieutenants. He was reported to be the top operational commander of Al Qaeda in Baghdad."
Bush's comments came one day after Gen. Richard Myers, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon that the U.S. military considered Abu Azzam the "No. 2 Al Qaeda operative in Iraq, next to Zarqawi."
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While counter terrorism analysts that have followed the insurgency closely joke about the quantity of No. 2 and No. 3's that the military has arrested or killed, U.S. counter terrorism officials never considered Azzam to be Zarqawi's No. 2 and characterized him more as a money man that was not involved in running attacks.
The characterization of Abu Azzam as No. 2 to Zarqawi is "not quite accurate," said one of the officials. According to this official, it would be more correct to describe Abu Azzam as a "top lieutenant" to Zarqawi who was involved in "running" terrorist operations in Baghdad--not all of Iraq. Other top lieutenants operate in other parts of the country, the official indicated.
Two other officials agreed that Abu Azzam was a senior figure, perhaps the emir (leader), of Al Qaeda operations in Baghdad, and that he was of critical importance in moving funds to insurgent operatives in the Iraqi capital area. "He's a money guy," one official said. "He is significant but not No. 2 [to Zarqawi]," said another official.
Even Al Qaeda in Iraq has denied that Azzam was their second ranking leader, saying instead that he was a soldier that led a brigade in Baghdad. The Zarqawi network is described by U.S. counter terrorism officials as too loosely connected and too dispersed to have a central command with a clear hierarchal structure and the U.S. military has placed a greater significance on other figures in the organization in recent months.
Upon closer analysis, it seems that the Azzam announcement was yet another photo-op and propaganda display during a troubling time for the second Bush administration.