Al Hurrah radio: Zarqawi has fled Baghdad, he is "in his last months"

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The leader of Iraq's most feared terror group fled Baghdad about two weeks ago because a U.S.-Iraqi military operation in the capital was threatening his al-Qaida movement, Iraq's interior minister said in a television interview aired Friday.

Bayan Jabr told the U.S.-owned Al Hurra television that the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and many of his al-Qaida in Iraq followers fled Baghdad because of the success of Operation Lightning, launched May 28.

Despite claims that the operation was successful, at least 30 people were killed in a wave of car-bombings and roadside explosions in the capital Friday. Jabr said "the terrorists" often have more weapons than the police.

He nonetheless claimed many al-Qaida members had left the capital "because they have lost the battle." Al-Zarqawi fled Baghdad 12 days ago after several car-rigging factories were discovered in a security operation, he said.

"Al-Zarqawi is in his last months," Jabr added.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050715/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_security

He was never responsible to begin with, imho. He's a myth!!

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.

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.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/10/04/wirq04.xml

people to take his place....

Saudi Arabia is a Sunni country. They don't want to see a Shiite government take control. Most of the Arab nations are Sunni and I'd say many people (some who work in governments allied with the USA) are covertly attempting to prevent the Shiite majority in Iraq from taking control. Most of the money that finances the killing of U.S. soldiers comes from countries allied with the USA, imho.

n/t

Anyone want to take a bet he'll be the mastermind behind the next attack on American soil?

...which is why we have not seen much of Cheney anywhere in the U.S.

...I've been watching our government and I haven't seen Dick....

...which is why we have not seen much of Cheney anywhere in the U.S.

Which one is this one? Both are supposed to be leaders of some major group.

;)

I keep hearing that he's dead, then somehow he's back alive.

I mean, fuck, if the insurgency has defeated death, how the hell are we supposed to fight zombies? We better get Ash over there quick.

listen up!

this ... is my BOOMSTICK!

(thanks for the laugh, i needed that today)

twice. Then he miraculously regrew his missing leg and then managed to outrun a US patrol that stopped his car. He appears to come back more times than Freddy Krueger.

Great news! :beer:

:rofl:

Aruba. They'll never find him there.

and doesn't he have a bunch of bullets in his lungs? This guy's superman.

ChimpCo need to put a face on the "terror" insurgency, since it's a lot easier to hate a megalomaniac and his small band of fanatical followers than it is to hate a grass roots movement that despises the US occupation and just wants Iraq to be Iraq.

Zarqawi may have been real once. Heck, maybe he still is real, as in alive. Probably recovering in hospital in Syria or Jordan or up to his neck in Islamic studies in Mecca or Qom.

He's the Michael Myer of Mesopotamia!!!

~snip~ Al-Hurra means "the free one" in Arabic. The station is intended to function as a counterweight to the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network -- the voice of the Arab world -- which routinely portrays the United States as a hated and suspect global power. At least this is how America interprets the station -- and that's why the Bush administration has created Al-Hurra.
~snip~

http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vp01.cfm?outfit=pmt&requesttimeout=500&folder=2053&paper=2380

this picture was snapped as Zarqawi made his getaway - by hang-glider.

:eyes:

I thought I read that somewhere.