Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead

host · 06-14-2006, 03:07 AM

docbungle, Powell, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld raised Zarqawi in stature to the point that they announced that he was "worth" a $25 million bounty.

Do you find it believable, that Zarqawi, in the midst of the escalating negative publicity disclosing and condemning Abu Ghraib abuse and degradation of Iraqi prisoners, chose to personally behead Nick Berg, on video, then obligingly post the video file on a website for download by the media, claim credit for doing so, but wear a mask during the videotaping that entirely covered his head?
The timing of the beheading, which immediatley shifted focus of negative publicity away from the Bush admin., and the U.S. military, and turned all of it onto Zarqawi, personally, was what I meant by my "incompetent" reference.
None of it is very believable. It's just too convenient, and it is such a "poor" strategic decision by an adversary portrayed by our leaders as "cunning" enough to be worthy of a $25 million bounty, it makes the "story" that Zarqawi, the terrorist, "mastermind", conveniently "stepped in", at the most opportune moment for our leaders, to display his own "personal" brutality, and thus, justify and redeem our leaders for invading and occupying Iraq, and relegated Abu Ghraib from a human rights "scandal", to a minor transgression,
moved suddenly to the back page of most newspapers.

Here is some illuminating news reporting about Zarqawi, in chronological order:

Quote:

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache...s&ct=clnk&cd=1
Rumsfeld says enemies fleeing through Iran, Iraq
Escape routes for terrorists
Story last updated at 8:57 p.m. on Friday, June 21, 2002
By John J. Lumpkin
Associated Press

.......Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, briefing reporters Friday, accused Iran's government of helping terrorists fleeing the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
''Iran had served as a haven for some terrorists leaving Afghanistan,'' he said. ''It is also true it has permitted the transit of terrorists, and the supporters of terrorists, through Iran.''
Some of those allowed to stay in Iran include an al-Qaida leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian accused of helping plot a bombing at the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman aimed at killing Americans and Israeli tourists during millennial celebrations, a U.S. official has said.
In 1999, Jordanian authorities broke up that hotel bombing plot. Zarqawi, who has used the alias Ahmad Fadeel al-Khalayleh, went from Afghanistan to Iran not long after the U.S. war in Afghanistan began last October, and he later left, U.S. officials have said. His current whereabouts are unclear..........

Quote:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...807286,00.html
White House 'exaggerating Iraqi threat'

Bush's televised address attacked by US intelligence

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday October 9, 2002
The Guardian

.....Officials in the CIA, FBI and energy department are being put under intense pressure to produce reports which back the administration's line, the Guardian has learned. In response, some are complying, some are resisting and some are choosing to remain silent.

"Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA," said Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-intelligence..........

..........There is already considerable scepticism among US intelligence officials about Mr Bush's claims of links between Iraq and al-Qaida. In his speech on Monday, Mr Bush referred to a "very senior al-Qaida leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year".

An intelligence source said the man the president was referring to was Abu Musab Zarqawi, who was arrested in Jordan in 2001 for his part in the "millennium plot" to bomb tourist sites there. He was subsequently released and eventually made his way to Iraq in search of treatment. However, intercepted telephone calls did not mention any cooperation with the Iraqi government.

There is also profound scepticism among US intelligence experts about the president's claim that "Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases".

Bob Baer, a former CIA agent who tracked al-Qaida's rise, said that there were contacts between Osama bin Laden and the Iraqi government in Sudan in the early 1990s and in 1998: "But there is no evidence that a strategic partnership came out of it. I'm unaware of any evidence of Saddam pursuing terrorism against the United States." .......

Quote:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...04/wirq04.xml/
Spies force retreat on 'al-Qa'eda link'
By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent, and David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 04/02/2003) (Comment by "host", date= Feb. 4, 2003....)

Colin Powell, the United States secretary of state, yesterday appeared to pull back from claims that he would show the United Nations a link between al-Qa'eda and Iraq, amid anger among Washington's spies over the way intelligence was being distorted to prove the link existed.

.........He faces a tough task made far tougher by President George W Bush's promise in his State of the Union address last week that Mr Powell would prove a link between al-Qa'eda and Iraq that, intelligence officials say, does not exist.

The intelligence shows that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a leading member of al-Qa'eda, was treated in hospital in Baghdad last spring but provides absolutely no evidence of any contacts with Iraqi officials.

It also shows that some members of a small Kurdish Islamic fundamentalist group, Ansar al-Islam, which controls a small area inside northern Iraq, were trained by al-Qa'eda. But this also shows no credible evidence of contacts with the Iraqi regime.

It is the attempt by both the White House and the Pentagon to make a clear and definite link between al-Zarqawi, Ansar al-Islam and Saddam Hussein that has infuriated many within the United States intelligence community.

"The intelligence is practically non-existent," one exasperated American intelligence source said. Most of the intelligence being used to support the idea of a link between al-Qa'eda and Saddam Hussein comes from Kurdish groups who are the bitter enemies of Ansar al-Islam, he said..............

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3067876/
Distorted Intelligence?
Secret German records cast doubt on the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection. Plus, why Qatar is footing the legal bills for an ‘enemy combatant’
Web Exclusive
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 12:15 p.m. ET June 9, 2006

June 25, 2003

THE VOLUMINOUS GERMAN records, obtained by NEWSWEEK, seem to undercut highly touted administration claims that Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi, a hardened Jordanian terrorist who once received medical treatment in Baghdad, was a key player in Al Qaeda.

In fact, the secret German records—compiled during interrogations with a captured Zarqawi associate—suggest that the shadowy Zarqawi headed his own terrorist group, called Al Tawhid, with its own goals and may even have been a jealous rival of Al Qaeda.

The captured associate, Shadi Abdallah, who is now on trial in Germany, told his interrogators last year that Zarqawi’s Al Tawid organization was one of several Islamist groups that acted “in opposition” to bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. At one point, Abdallah described how Zarqawi even vetoed the idea of splitting charity funds collected in Germany between Al Tawhid and Al Qaeda.

While the internal machinations between Al Tawhid and Al Qaeda may seem obscure, they cut to the heart of one of the most politically sensitive issues in Washington at the moment: whether the Bush White House exaggerated and distorted U.S. intelligence to justify the war on Iraq.

Much of the debate revolves around claims that Saddam had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons—stockpiles that so far have not been found. But an equally fierce debate has been taking place behind the scenes about the handling of sketchy, and at times, contradictory evidence relating to Saddam’s supposed connections with Al Qaeda.

Zarqawi was at the center of those claims. In a Cincinnati speech delivered Oct. 7, on the eve of a congressional vote authorizing him to wage war on Iraq, President Bush asserted that “Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.” His chief example was that “one very senior Al Qaeda leader” had “received medical treatment in Baghdad”—an obvious reference to Zarqawi, who had his leg amputated there in 2002.

Zarqawi received even more prominence in secretary of State Colin Powell’s Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations Security Council. In that address, Powell described Zarqawi as “an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.” During his stay in Baghdad, Powell claimed that “nearly two dozen…al Qaeda affiliates” converged on the Iraqi capital and “established a base of operations there.”

But the German interrogations of Shadi Abdallah present a more complex and somewhat different picture of Zarqawi’s role in international terrorism.......

..........While a member of bin Laden’s entourage, Abdallah says he had numerous conversations with Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni resident in Hamburg who later played a key role in the September 11 hijacking conspiracy.

But after “only about two weeks” as a bin Laden bodyguard, Abdallah told German investigators, he became disenchanted with bin Laden’s hard-line ideology, which he found distasteful because of bin Laden’s insistence that the Koran allowed the killing of women children and old people.

Abdallah said he made his way from bin Laden’s hideout to Zarqawi’s Al Tawhid training camp near Herat. There, he was informed that Al Tawhid’s mission was explicitly to “fight the Jordanian regime and to overthrow the government of Jordan” as well as the “annihilation of Jews all over the world.”

...............At the time of Abdallah’s arrest by German authorities last spring, Zarqawi apparently was still running the group out of Iran; and the only Iraqi connection with Al Qaeda was access to phony Iraqi documents, Abdallah told authorities.

Several U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports that were used to craft Powell’s Feb. 5 presentation to the Security Council told NEWSWEEK they were aware all along of the German information about Zarqawi. But the officials insist the CIA firmly stands behind what Powell said about Zarqawi’s purported links to Al Qaeda. Even the German evidence, they said, indicates that there were some associations and links between the two organizations.

Despite the inflammatory language of Powell’s U.N. presentation, Bush Administration officials also have acknowledged that their information about Zarqawi’s stay in Baghdad is sketchy at best. According to U.S. officials, Zarqawi entered Iraq around May of last year to have an amputation performed on his leg, which was injured while he was fleeing American forces in Afghanistan. According to some reports, one reason that he might have gone to Baghdad for the operation was that the Iranian government, in one of its sporadic crackdowns on Al Qaeda, had expelled him.

Senior U.S. officials acknowledged to NEWSWEEK within days of Powell’s speech that it was “unknown” whether Saddam’s government helped arrange Zarqawi’s hospital stay in Baghdad or whether Iraqi intelligence had any contacts with him while he was in Baghdad.

Since U.S. forces ousted Saddam two months ago, only one confirmed member of Zarqawi’s group has been captured by American troops in Iraq. Little if any other information has surfaced to illuminate Zarqawi’s Baghdad stay or the dealings between Saddam’s government and Zarqawi or other alleged Islamic terrorist operatives, including bin Laden. U.S. officials acknowledge that some top captured Al Qaeda leaders, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, have told U.S. interrogators bin Laden vetoed a long-term relationship with Saddam because he did not want to be in the Iraqi leader’s debt. .......

...........The German government evidence appears to demonstrate how the Zarqawi story told by Powell to the Security Council was partial at best and misleading at worst, in the sense that it took Zarqawi’s tenuous relationship to Al Qaeda and his mysterious visit to Baghdad and lifted them out of context to imply evidence of a closer collaboration between Iraq and bin Laden than the facts demonstrated.

Missing entirely from Powell’s speech was the qualifying and even contradictory information in the German files. Also missing was any reference to Zarqawi’s sojourn in Iran, which knowledgeable officials concede might be as significant, if not more important, than any visit he paid to Baghdad.

One intelligence source says that as the Bush Administration cranked up the government to prepare for war, intelligence agencies were ordered to produce two critical papers that could be published to justify an attack on Saddam. One paper related to Weapons of Mass destruction, the other to Saddam’s links to terrorism. Classified versions of both papers were written and the paper on WMD was eventually published by the Bush Administration as an official dossier. But an unclassified version of the paper on Saddam’s links to terrorism was never published because intelligence agencies could not reach final agreement on what exactly it should say.....

Quote:

Note: If you are interested...the rest of this article is focused on this man,
al-Marri, and there is more info on what became of him, here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarallah_al-Marri
Jarallah al-Marri is a citizen of Qatar currently held in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba.[1] Al Marri's detainee ID number is 334.

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0030205-1.html
For Immediate Release
February 5, 2003

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council

......... But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated in collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants.

Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan,....the Zarqaqi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.
Colin Powell slide 39
Slide 39

The network is teaching its operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons......Death comes within 72 hours and there is no antidote, there is no cure. It is fatal.
Colin Powell slide 40
Slide 40

Those helping to run this camp are Zarqawi lieutenants operating in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein's controlled Iraq..... Al Qaida safe haven in the region. After we swept Al Qaida from Afghanistan, some of its members accepted this safe haven. They remain their today.

Zarqawi's activities are not confined to this small corner of north east Iraq. He traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment, staying in the capital of Iraq for two months while he recuperated to fight another day.

During this stay, nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there. These Al Qaida affiliates, based in Baghdad, now coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network, and they've now been operating freely in the capital for more than eight months.

Iraqi officials deny accusations of ties with Al Qaida. These denials are simply not credible. Last year an Al Qaida associate bragged that the situation in Iraq was, quote, ``good,'' that Baghdad could be transited quickly.

We know these affiliates are connected to Zarqawi because they remain even today in regular contact with his direct subordinates, including the poison cell plotters, and they are involved in moving more than money and materiale.

Last year, two suspected Al Qaida operatives were arrested crossing from Iraq into Saudi Arabia......From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi can direct his network in the Middle East and beyond.

We, in the United States, all of us at the State Department, and the Agency for International Development--we all lost a dear friend with the cold-blooded murder of Mr. Lawrence Foley in Amman, Jordan last October.....The captured assassin says his cell received money and weapons from Zarqawi for that murder.

POWELL: ......Iraqi officials protest that they are not aware of the whereabouts of Zarqawi or of any of his associates. Again, these protests are not credible. We know of Zarqawi's activities in Baghdad. I described them earlier.

And now let me add one other fact. We asked a friendly security service to approach Baghdad about extraditing Zarqawi and providing information about him and his close associates. This service contacted Iraqi officials twice, and we passed details that should have made it easy to find Zarqawi. The network remains in Baghdad. Zarqawi still remains at large to come and go....

.....Zarqawi's terrorism is not confined to the Middle East. Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist actions against countries, including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia.
Colin Powell slide 41
Slide 41

According to detainee Abuwatia (ph), who graduated from Zarqawi's terrorist camp in Afghanistan.....

Since last year, members of this network have been apprehended in France, Britain, Spain and Italy. By our last count, 116 operatives connected to this global web have been arrested.
Colin Powell slide 42
Slide 42

The chart you are seeing shows the network in Europe. We know about this European network, and we know about its links to Zarqawi.....

......The detainee who helped piece this together says the plot also targeted Britain. Later evidence, again, proved him right. When the British unearthed a cell there just last month, one British police officer was murdered during the disruption of the cell.
Colin Powell slide 43
Slide 43

We also know that Zarqawi's colleagues have been active in the Pankisi Gorge, Georgia and in Chechnya, Russia.....Members of Zarqawi's network say their goal was to kill Russians with toxins.

We are not surprised that Iraq is harboring Zarqawi and his subordinates. This understanding builds on decades long experience with respect to ties between Iraq and Al Qaida. ........

.......... And the record of Saddam Hussein's cooperation with other Islamist terrorist organizations is clear. Hamas, for example, opened an office in Baghdad in 1999, and Iraq has hosted conferences attended by Palestine Islamic Jihad. These groups are at the forefront of sponsoring suicide attacks against Israel.

Al Qaida continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As with the story of Zarqawi and his network, I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaida.

Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he, himself, described it.

This senior Al Qaida terrorist was responsible for one of Al Qaida's training camps in Afghanistan.........

Read the news reports in the quote boxes or at the links above, docbungle, then read Powell's entire Feb., 2003 presentation to the "world", (that I confined and abbreviated above, to "Zarqawi references") at the UN. Note that Powell's key assistant of 16 years, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, later called Powell's speech that day, as I documented earlier in this thread, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/08/19/powell.un/">"the lowest point in my life".</a>

Then, please consider how interwined the Powell/Bush administration assertions about Zarqawi were with their argument that he was the "key" proof of a close ties and cooperation between Saddam's government and Al Qaeda. After Cheney's discredited assertions about Atta's Prague "meeting" with an Iraqi intelligenc official he denied what he was videotaped saying:

Quote:

http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/...404_flash3.htm
CHENEY: CLEAR LINKS BETWEEN SADDAM, AL-QAEDA; CALLS NY TIMES ARTICLE 'OUTRAGEOUS'
Thu Jun 17 2004 19:00:33 ET
...BORGER: Well, let's get to Mohammad Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, "pretty well confirmed."

Vice Pres. CHENEY: No, I never said that.

BORGER: OK.

Vice Pres. CHENEY: Never said that. ......

......BORGER: Let me ask you what your response is to the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, who said upon looking at this 9/11 report that this administration, quote, "misled America."

Vice Pres. CHENEY: In what respect? I haven't seen that.

BORGER: In terms of the relationship between al-Qaida and Iraq......

Quote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3715396.stm
Tuesday, 5 October, 2004,
Rumsfeld questions Saddam-Bin Laden link

Rumsfeld's comments can be revealing
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has cast doubt on whether there was ever a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

..........He also said that although most of al-Qaeda's senior leaders had sworn an oath to Osama Bin Laden, the man suspected to be the principal leader of the network in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had not.

Mr Zarqawi's reported presence in Baghdad before the war has been cited in the past by the US administration as evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. ........

Quote:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FJ15Ak02.html
Oct 15, 2004
THE ROVING EYE
Zarqawi - Bush's man for all seasons
By Pepe Escobar

.......Cheney also insisted that Zarqawi could not have had his leg treated in a Baghdad hospital without Saddam's Mukhabarat (secret service) knowing it. But the leg story is a mess. US intelligence thought that Zarqawi had lost a leg in Afghanistan in 2002. But then, last May, they concluded that he still had both legs. The Bush administration's "evidence" of an al-Qaeda-Saddam link via Zarqawi may be an intercepted phone call by Zarqawi from a Baghdad hospital in 2002, while his leg was being attended to. But then "Zarqawi" shows up in a video with both legs in the 2004 beheading of hostage Nick Berg.

The truth is more straightforward. Zarqawi had no connection either with bin Laden or with Saddam. Secular Saddam hosting an Islamic radical, of all people, at a time when the American campaign against the "axis of evil" had reached a fever-pitch is a ludicrous proposition. A newspaper editor in the Sunni triangle says Zarqawi may have gone on an underground trip to Baghdad to have his leg operated on before scurrying back to Kurdistan. And sources in Peshawar confirm to Asia Times Online that Zarqawi never took the all-significant bayat (oath of allegiance) and so never struck a formal alliance with bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership.........

Quote:

http://www.9-11commission.gov/report...t.pdf#page=487
http://demos.vivisimo.com/search?inp...iraq&x=40&y=12
75. Intelligence report, Iraq approach to Bin Ladin, Mar. 16, 1999. 76. CIA analytic report,“Ansar al-Islam:Al Qa’ida’s Ally in Northeastern Iraq,” CTC 2003-40011CX, Feb. 1, 2003. See also DIA analytic report,“Special Analysis: Iraq’s Inconclusive Ties to Al-Qaida,” July 31, 2002; CIA analytic report,“Old School Ties,” Mar. 10, 2003.We have seen other intelligence reports at the CIA about 1999 contacts.They are consistent with the conclusions we provide in the text, and their reliability is uncertain. Although there have been suggestions of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda regarding chemical weapons and explosives training, the most detailed information alleging such ties came from an al Qaeda operative who recanted much of his original information. Intelligence report, interrogation of al Qaeda operative, Feb. 14, 2004.Two senior Bin Ladin associates have adamantly denied that any such ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. Intelligence reports, interrogations of KSM and Zubaydah, 2003....

There...docbungle ! Now, if you've skimmed through all of this, you pretty much end up "not knowing", as much as I "don't know". It's all there, in chronological order....and it ends in the month of Oct., with BBC quoting Rumsfeld saying that Zarqawi, "never took an oath" to Bin Laden, and the asiatimes.com report, just ten days later, says the same. Lastly, the 9-11 Commission report footnote, disputes Powell's "proof" that Zarqaqi's “Ansar al-Islam:Al Qa’ida’s Ally in Northeastern Iraq,” was anything other than, "uncertain".
If you've read Powell's entire Feb., 5, 2003 presentation to the UN, it might be "fun" to pick out two things that he used to try to build a coalition in the UN to invade Iraq, that have stood up to time and scrutiny....just two.

I don't know what to "believe" as to whether Zarqawi actually existed as described by our leaders, whether he is/was "al-Qaida", whether he is alive or dead, whether he was beaten before he died, whether a "child" was killed in the house where he was allegedly bombed, or whether he even mattered, beyond being the subject of a long and contradictory, US government propaganda "Op". I do know that nobody else, outside of a small group close to our leaders and their trusted senior military and intelligence officers, know either. This is just another little exercise, brought to you by that "Bush hatin",
"America hatin" liber-ull, "host", intended to challenge you to think about what you really "can know" reliably, based on what actually is spewed out of this U.S. administration...or at least, what you have to ignore, in order to disagree with what I've tried to persuade you to examine.......