WHAT DO WE KNOW EXACTLY ABOUT ABU MUSAB ZARQAWI? (Josh Marshall has doubts

What do we know exactly about Abu Musab Zarqawi?

According to various news accounts he is the chief jihadist/insurgent in Iraq. He is the head of the Iraqi 'branch' of al Qaida, the local subsidiary. Responsibility for numerous bombings and atrocities has been ascribed to him; or, in other cases, he, his supporters, or those speaking for him seem happy to take responsibility themselves.

But it is hard not to see this information in the light of the fairly constant tendency through the War on Terror to build up varous Terrorist Masterminds, who become the focus of most or all news reportage, then trail off into nothing. Not infrequently, they have an uncanny resemblance to characters out of 1984. And with Zarqawi particularly there is a welter of contradictory and often difficult-to-credit information about him that invites further suspicion.

Remember, we first heard of Zarqawi because his alleged 2002 trip to a Baghdad hospital to have his leg amputated was the sign of Saddam's dalliance with al Qaida figures. Only now he seems to have two legs. So, assuming he's not some sort of amphibian who can regenerate limbs, that story doesn't pan out.

With some regularity he is apparently killed, but then turns out not to be dead. Often, if you read between the lines, it's not clear that we know enough about Zarqawi to be able to identify him even if we had a relatively intact body to examine. In a similarly odd fashion, second-in-commands seem to be caught with some regularity, only to be replaced by other long-time second-in-commands.

(snip)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

I'll tell you, Josh. Everything we "know" about this "Zarqawi", we heard either from the Bush mis-administration, or from the Bush-owned media. So in other words, we know NOTHING about "Zarqawi".

That's why I, for one, am not scared of "Zarqawi", and don't need the Bush mis-administration to "fight" him for me.

many times before that "Zarqawi" is actually a composite of several terrorists that has been conveniently lumped into one, convenient

BOOGEYMAN

for the administration to rally the faithful around.

While there may, in fact, be a real Zarqawi, it is doubtful that's he is as clever, smart, brilliant, devious or murderous as the US claims he is.

from the Princess Bride.

especially since we kept hearing those annoying reports that he was dead...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0510/S00052.htm

Were British SAS Soldiers Planting Bombs in Basra?

Does anyone remember the shock with which the British public greeted the revelation four years ago that one of the members of the Real IRA unit whose bombing attack in Omagh on August 15, 1998 killed twenty-nine civilians had been a double agent, a British army soldier?

That soldier was not Britain’s only terrorist double agent. A second British soldier planted within the IRA claimed he had given forty-eight hours advance notice of the Omagh car-bomb attack to his handlers within the Royal Ulster Constabulary, including "details of one of the bombing team and the man’s car registration." Although the agent had made an audio tape of his tip-off call, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, chief constable of the RUC, declared that "no such information was received" (http://www.sundayherald.com/17827).

This second double agent went public in June 2002 with the claim that from 1981 to 1994, while on full British army pay, he had worked for "the Force Research Unit, an ultra-secret wing of British military intelligence," as an IRA mole. With the full knowledge and consent of his FRU and MI5 handlers, he became a bombing specialist who "mixed explosive and … helped to develop new types of bombs," including "light-sensitive bombs, activated by photographic flashes, to overcome the problem of IRA remote-control devices having their signal jammed by army radio units." He went on to become "a member of the Provisional IRA’s ‘internal security squad’—also known as the ‘torture unit’—which interrogated and executed suspected informers" (http://www.sundayherald.com/print25646).

The much-feared commander of that same "torture unit" was likewise a mole, who had previously served in the Royal Marines’ Special Boat Squadron (an elite special forces unit, the Marines’ equivalent to the better-known SAS). A fourth mole, a soldier code-named "Stakeknife" whose military handlers "allowed him to carry out large numbers of terrorist murders in order to protect his cover within the IRA," was still active in December 2002 as "one of Belfast’s leading Provisionals" (http://www.sundayherald.com/29997).

especially, given the fact that only months ago, there were those British soldiers dressed as "Arab terrorists" who exploded that car bomb in Iraq. Remember that one?