Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead
 

(http://service.spiegel.de/cache/inte...420251,00.html)



The question is: How much will it change? How important was al-Zarqawi? Will the Insurgency fall after his death?

Personally I don't think so. The Insurgents are, AFAIK, organised in small, rather independend cells. I'm afraid the death of al-Zarqawi will now have much effect. Perhaps in the next days there will be even more attacks to retaliate for the death.
I think the US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad is right, the violence will not stop because of this, but I'm quite certain that Bush will present this as THE vicory and as a sign that the insurgency in Iraq is close to collapse, again.

This is a big whack at the leadership but I'm not convinced it will do much in the long run.

The violence will continue.

That said, there does seem to be some suggestion that someone inside gave him up. While this is likely just someone doing it for the money, it does open the possibility that there is a crack in the leadership...

while this is great news in one aspect, all it truly is is a power vacuum. Someone else will step in to take zarqawis place. The only thing this conflict accomplish, should we stay at it long enough, is give people who are thinking about leading a terrorist group some pause while they consider if their life is worth it.

It would have made a better positive impact (if a positive impact comes from it at all) were he taken alive. Instead, some will view this as martyrdom rather than surrender or not "finishing the fight" as Saddam.

This is definatly good news but I to wonder how much impact this will have on the war on Iraq. I hope that this will lead to a decline in Al Queda activity in Iraq and if a new leader does step forward the he will be clumsy. My fear is Al Queda will wise up and not make it publicly known who the leaders are.

Yes, the question is also how big his role really was. He was certanly a very loud voice of the insugency, but there are multiple groups fighting against the US forces, most of them probably don't care about al-Zarqawi

I'm pretty much with psycho_dad on this one. I'm afraid he will become a martyr and any short term positive effect this has for the U.S. will be eventually overshadowed by his martyrdom.

Also, if we are to believe the experts, he was only a small factor in the overall violence in Iraq and therefore his death will not have as large an impact on the insurgency as we might hope.

As an aside, regarding the title of the article "Butcher of Baghdad is Dead": how many butcher of baghdads are there? I thought Saddam Hussein owned that title?

True. And yet, on the other hand, then you open up the gates for more kidnappings demanding his release. Truly, a no win situation.

While I certainly will not mourn his death in the least, I feel that all we've managed to accomplish is to swat the big mosquito, that was making all the noise buzzing around our head, while a dozen smaller quieter ones feast merrily away.

What is this like the 10th time this guy has been reported to be captured or killed? At least this time it hasn't been retracted yet.

Don't forget this guy's status has been severly over hyped by a pentagon that plants stories in Iraq. The boogie man is apparently dead. Who will now fill in that role for the defense department?

Ding dong the bitch is dead, hope he suffered a great deal.

He personaly beheaded 2 americans, I sincerely hope he laid there with that house on him for hours, wishing the great OBL would swoop from the sky and rescue him.

The US should have dropped this bomb on him a year ago while he was holed up in that mosque in Fallujah.

If it makes a difference or not still remains to be seen, but atleast there are 8 or so less terrorists in the world.

the best thing that could come of this, is that the al-Qaida members that are looking to take his place start fighting among themselves and that it causes a breakdown of the organization. This is unlikely in my opinion, but it is possible.

reconmike...please....share with me how you filter out fact from fiction...how you decide what to embrace and repeat, vs. what info you discard and what info you grow skeptical about? What would prompt you to believe anything that the U.S. Military "discloses", or that comes from the U.S. executive branch?

Why are you so forgiving of folks who have squandered their credibilty? Have they rehabilitated themselves, in your eyes, or have you never waivered in your acceptance of what they've told you for the last 5-1/2 years. I'm asking you these questions because your post seemed to be the best example of someone who has the least, or no doubts.

Do you think that Dexter Filkins added the line below because he might have still been embarassed that the U.S. military, in April was caught, through it's own bungled display of a slide presentation to the media, filtering propaganda about Zarqawi, specifically to Filkins, who then obediently published it on the front page of the NY Times, without noting his own skepticism?

Look at the "face" released by our military, mike....freshly "bombed" and washed clean for the cameras with ivory soap. More sanitzed BS from our own version of Big Bro, IMO....

Let's go kill more CIA trained terrorists!!

How about we take apart the CIA and stop the whole next generation of terrorists instead of trying to kill one at a time? We've been meddling in others affairs so long that we've created our own enemies. It's absurd.

javascript:photoPop('207546/30_27_060806_zarqawi_photo.jpg','June 8: Image displayed by the U.S. Military at a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq, shows body of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.','AP',350,450);

Here ya go Host this image doesnt look to sanitized to me, maybe you should look at other sources for your information besides the times and the post.
Because we both know neither of those rags would want to offend anyone.

As to what I believe or disbelieve in the information the US military "discloses" as you so put it, really doesnt matter, you see being that I retired from the US Marine Corps with over 20 years I know what they release and do not release.
And as much as you think you have the "right" to know what they are doing all the time, you do not so get over it. They will tell you what they want when they want.

Is it just a coincidence that the "Nicholas Berg beheaded by Zarqawai" story, was released, 2 years ago, and distracted from the height of focus on Abu Ghraib prison abuse and the "Zarqawi killed in air strike" story was released after world stock market values had been dropping alarmingly for days? How fortunate for TPTB....
<img src="http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/w?s=%5EDJI">
<img src="http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/w?s=%5EN225">
reconmike....as far as your posted belief that
Here is some of what you have to "swallow" (or ignore) to simply accept the Nicholas Berg "beheaded by Zarqawi" story.....
reconmike, don't you find it odd that no autopsy was reported to have been done on Mr. Berg's body? Isn't that highly unusual in a murder investigation of this stature? Doesn't Berg's email password, ending up, according to authorities, in the hands <b>"of an associate of Zacarias Moussaoui"</b>, seem a bit curious, and how about the fact that the FBI had free access to Berg to question him while he was in custody in Iraq, and apparently ordered his release from custody, but will not admit that he was ever in U.S. custody?

Host, seriously, more and more you grab at straws in your attempt to deny anything this administration does which results in something good. Instead you turn the entire government into mass murderers.

9/11, Gitmo, and now Zarkawi is innocent of decapitation... it was actually the US.

Host, all that last article tells me is that it is likely the kidnappers weren't from Iraq. That they were a group made up of Russians, Jordanians and Egyptians (not outside of the scope of things).

While I think it is fair to speculate that the US Administration *might* do something like this... I really think it is just speculation and doesn't hold enough water to give it much more than a cursory examination.

Until there is a smoking gun or some concrete evidence, it doesn't rise above the level of conspiracy theory.

will, do you have any proof whatsoever to prove that the CIA trained Bin Laden or Al-Zarqawi? I mean, seriously, you've been peddling this myth that the CIA has trained these guys all these times and you've offered no proof at all to show that this is true. While it is true that we funded and armed the Mujahudeen during the Soviet Invasion, most of the factions we gave aid to became fighters for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance (hell, they even fought under the same name).

To put this bullshit to rest once and for all: http://www2.gol.com/users/coynerhm/osama_bin_laden.htm and there have also been many declassified government documents pertaining to this incident that have debunked this myth as well.

Seaver, the military already accidentally revealed that they planted "stuff" about Zarqawi that may have been untrue.....so why would today's "news" demand a "hands off" reaction. They already broke our trust....
<b>I already posted the preceding quotes in a larger excerpt on this thread, ans still Seaver.....you responded by posting a criticism of me.....Aren't you "shooting the messenger"? How can we possibly accept that Zarqawi was "killed" or that it is even a signifigant event, when the "authorities" that you criticize me for relentlessly challenging and questioning, were caught deliberately misinforming us about Zarqawi and exaggerating his signifigance and role in Iraq?</b>

Seaver, isn't it established now that Powell's nearly entire Feb. 5, 2003 presentation to the UN general assembly was misleading, or outright untrue, even though it was the U.S. administration's official, justification to the world, to invade and occupy Iraq? Isn't it true, that for many months after the "mobile weapons" lab "component" of that Powell presentation, was known to be debunked, that officials as high in authority as Rumsfeld, Bush, and Cheney, continued to cite the "trailers" as "justification for the invasion?
Powell's own key aide of 16 years said:
My POV is not the "problem", Seaver,

The total lack of this administration's own credibility, squandered in stages, by deliberate lies and distortions in pursuit of aggressive war and attacks on American's constitutionally guaranteed rights, and unprecedented sums spent on distribution of propaganda and misinformation, by U.S, civilian and military authorities, have created a climate where everything that thet say or do is suspect, and should be met with debate and criticism by everyone, not just me.

Seaver, is it more my fault that Bush's approval rating is in the shitter, at 30 percent now....or is it more his fault, and to a degree....yours....for letting him think that he could mislead the world and act contrary to our best interests and the constitution, with no challenge and little questioning of his actions and motives, by you....and the folks who have only defected from unquestioningly supporting him....in just the past year or so?

That's the real question, Seaver, and the answers that are coming in show that history will not be kind to the Bush administration, or to those who supported it. Your criticism of me amounts to baseless scapegoating.

This is good news.

Naturally I have no doubt that th violenve will continue, and it will probably continue for quite a while, but that's expected to happen until everything eventually settles. In this case it never hurts to knock out a known terrorist.

In regards to the issue of martyrdom, I think it's a bit of a moot point. What are the issues? On one hand you can claim that people will be rising up for their martyr, but they do that anyway. If you liked Zarqawi, chances are his death didn't change your opinion of his much. If you didn't like him, odds are that his death isn't going to start converting him for being a martyr. People have already chosen their sides, and I personally believe that if you knock out a highly publicised 'leader' then people will be less inclined to start joining up with that group.

I suppose in my opinion this is nothing but a good thing. A bad man died, I don't believe there will be any real ramifications to the killing of Zarqawi aside from the fact that he's not around to do any more harm.

It's common knowledge that Osama Bin Laden and many members of the current al-Qaeda were trained by the CIA when he was a member of the Afghan jihad fighting against Communist Russia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/155236.stm

While the official story of the US government so far is that they have not trained Bin Laden...it is general knowledge to the rest of us.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/con...24fr_archive03

I'm really at a loss for words when trying to describe the Zarqawi and Berg propaganda machines. We have been totally lied to and misled about both of these guys. Even Berg's family don't believe what the government is telling them about their son. I'll just leave it at that for now.

Host, since you try and refute the savage beheading of Berg I noticed you did not even attempt to do the same with Eugene Anderson.
Care to explain why?

Im trying at the moment to load a graph that shows maybe al-Zarqawi's killing
was released just as lead prices are falling on the world market,
perhaps Bush and co. will make them rebound as this is proof that the US NEEDS MORE BOMBS.

I doubt it will do anything to stop the attacks, or make the US more successful in Iraq, Zarqawi was a minor player in the insurgency, whom the US needed to blame attacks on and try and build world support for the war in Iraq. Another leader will step forward and take control, only this time they will probably be smarter and stay underground.

Bodyhammer86...here is the earliest report that I can find....via newsbank subscription service....it's 12 years old....
and reconmike....although you've done nothing to refute the reports....all from credible news media sources.....the largest circulation newspaper in Australia, and the NY Times and Washington Post...besides your sarcastic response, I'll look into the reports on Eugene Anderson. I've never heard of him, but I'll share whatever I can find.

I have a personal need to know what I'm talking about. Even though I make a great effort to always be personally satisfied that I do....before I post, I still take a lot of heat and taunts from folks who seem to have a lower threshhold
of acceptance of what they publicly admit about what it is that they are, SURE OF.....

When the opinions of my critics here, are too often "in synch" with reports originating from a now totally discredited U.S. administration.....as if the process of the disintegration of the administration's credibility, and it's leaders public approval rating is not taking place, for years now, before our very eyes, I redouble my efforts to know what the f*ck I'm talking about.

Comments to the effect of "what is wrong with you, host", the administration says al-Zarqawi....or Gitmo....or Haditha....or Abu Ghraib....or bin Laden....why do you hate them....or question them.....<b>that are backed by nothing more than spin from that same U.S. administration</b>....can't cut it here, anymore....if this forum is still to be located in a rational part of the rest of the world. Please stop repeating what the administration tells you....and post what you think, and point us to independent information that backs what you believe. Like..... Senate Judiciary Committee Chair, Arlen Specter does,
in his letter of protest to his V.P., Dick Cheney:
<a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/specter-cheney/?resultpage=1&">Dear Mr. Vice President.....</a>

Host, how do you find these articles? Any 12 year old articles are hard to find on the internet, let alone relevent ones. Thanks for the assistence.

From a middle-eastern analyst, no less. He surely wouldn't have any sort of bias or spin, would he? And your second quote does nothing to refute my point about Bin Laden not being trained by the CIA. It simply says that the muhjadeen fighters were armed and funded by the CIA, and hell CIA agents were told specifically not to sell weapons to him because they knew Bin Laden was a complete nutjob even then. From Daniel Pipes: http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/47182

Oh, I'm sorry, you're article is clearly the end all of information and is not suceptible to any kind of scruteny, wheras my articles are obviously without merrit. The fact of the matter is that the source of the "no Osama/CIA link" information is from US and UK govnermental sources...sources that make a middle easter analyst look like the author of the bible.

I am facinated that you simply don't trust my first linked article because the source is middle-eastern. Do you know how racist that comes off? I'm sure you're not racist (so far as I know), but your dismissal suggests otherwise. Do you trust black people when it comes to crimes possibly committed by blacks?

Will, I'm not racist, but did it ever occur to you he just might have some sort of bias or axe to grind with the US? Seeing as I don't know his credentials, it wouldn't be a bad idea to wonder whether or not he has an agenda. I was just saying, that there are sources that say otherwise about the so called CIA-Bin Laden link that you've never backed up until now. Plus, I find it funny how you criticize me for supposedly taking what my articles are saying as the gospel when you're doing the same with the articles you've posted saying that there is a link between the CIA and Bin Laden.

But then again, this is a subject for a different thread. Apologies for the threadjack.

Oh my god! Really?! You do so much research and you dont realize that Zarkawi is Egyptian?

There was a big difference between the Arab fighters in Afghanistan and the Afghani Mujahadeen. Yes they were the same religion (sorta), and yes they still fought the Russians, but because they fought in the same direction does not mean they had anything in common politically.

I'm not saying Bin Laden did not get indirect training, however the lines of supplies have been declassified and they were primarily to the warlords of the Mujahadeen. This is seen quite simply because they were the exact same warlords who helped us defeat the Taliban and Bin Laden.

It's not a scapegoat, and I'm not the problem. It's you constantly posting ludicris theories, e.g. that the US killed that man. Did it ever cross your mind that the fighters could be ex-Iraq/Syrian military (your "evidence" of the orange jump suite and at-ease stance)? No, of course not. Bush is to blame.

Seaver, just to clarify, Zarqawi is Jordanian, but that still fits into the groups that Host put in his accent list. Just thought I'd clear that for you.

Body, just to clarify, Zarqawi WAS Jordarian, now he is just another dead AQ member.

As for concerns about his martyrdom, the reports are in that he was betrayed. To quote the front page of CNN, "Terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was betrayed from inside the al Qaeda in Iraq group he led in the insurgency fight against coalition troops, the U.S. military says."

Damn, freudian slip, I guess.

A Good Day's Work
Why Zarqawi's death matters.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Thursday, June 8, 2006, at 2:00 PM ET

The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is excellent news in its own right and even more excellent if, as U.S. sources in Iraq are claiming, it resulted from information that derived from people who were or had been close to him. (And, if that claim is black propaganda, then it is clever black propaganda, which is also excellent news.)

It hasn't taken long for the rain to start falling on this parade. Nick Berg's father, a MoveOn type now running for Congress on the Green Party ticket, has already said that he blames President George Bush for the video-beheading of his own son (but of course) and mourned the passing of Zarqawi as he would the death of any man (but of course, again). The latest Atlantic has a brilliantly timed cover story by Mary Anne Weaver, which tends to the view that Zarqawi was essentially an American creation, but seems to undermine its own prominence by suggesting that, in addition to that, Zarqawi wasn't all that important.

Not so fast. Zarqawi contributed enormously to the wrecking of Iraq's experiment in democratic federalism. He was able to help ensure that the Iraqi people did not have one single day of respite between 35 years of war and fascism, and the last three-and-a-half years of misery and sabotage. He chose his targets with an almost diabolical cunning, destroying the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad (and murdering the heroic envoy Sérgio Vieira de Melo) almost before it could begin operations, and killing the leading Shiite Ayatollah Hakim outside his place of worship in Najaf. His decision to declare a jihad against the Shiite population in general, in a document of which Weaver (on no evidence) doubts the authenticity, has been the key innovation of the insurgency: applying lethal pressure to the most vulnerable aspect of Iraqi society. And it has had the intended effect, by undermining Grand Ayatollah Sistani and helping empower Iranian-backed Shiite death squads.

Not bad for a semiliterate goon and former jailhouse enforcer from a Bedouin clan in Jordan. There are two important questions concerning the terrible influence that he has been able to exert. The first is: How much state and para-state support did he enjoy? The second is: What was the nature of his relationship with Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida?

For the defeatists and pacifists, these are easy questions to answer. Colin Powell was wrong to identify Zarqawi, in his now-notorious U.N. address, as a link between the Saddam regime and the Bin-Ladenists. The man's power was created only by the coalition's intervention, and his connection to al Qaida was principally opportunistic. On this logic, the original mistake of the United States would have been to invade Afghanistan, thereby forcing Zarqawi to flee his camp outside Herat and repositioning him for a new combat elsewhere. Thus, fighting against al-Qaida is a mistake to begin with: It only encourages them.

I think that (for once) Colin Powell was on to something. I know that Kurdish intelligence had been warning the coalition for some time before the invasion that former Afghanistan combatants were making their way into Iraq, which they saw as the next best chance to take advantage of a state that was both "failed" and "rogue." One might add that Iraq under Saddam was not an easy country to enter or to leave, and that no decision on who was allowed in would be taken by a junior officer. Furthermore, the Zarqawi elements appear to have found it their duty to join with the Ansar al-Islam splinter group in Kurdistan, which for some reason thought it was the highest duty of jihad to murder Saddam Hussein's main enemies. But perhaps I have a suspicious mind.

We happen to know that the Baathist regime was recruiting and training foreign fighters and brigading them with the gruesome "Fedayeen Saddam." (This is incidentally a clue to what the successor regime in Iraq might have looked like as the Saddam-plus-sanctions state imploded and Baathism itself went into eclipse.) That bomb at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, for example, was no improvised explosive device. It was a huge charge of military-grade ordnance. Are we to believe that a newly arrived Bedouin Jordanian thug could so swiftly have scraped acquaintance with senior-level former Baathists? (The charges that destroyed the golden dome of the Shiites in Samarra were likewise rigged and set by professional military demolitionists.)

Zarqawi's relations with Bin Laden are a little more tortuous. Mary Anne Weaver shows fairly convincingly that the two men did not get along and were in some sense rivals for the leadership. That's natural enough: Religious fanatics are schismatic by definition. Zarqawi's visceral hatred of the Shiite heresy was unsettling even to some more mainstream Wahhabi types, as was his undue relish in making snuff videos. (How nice to know that these people do have their standards.) However, when Zarqawi sought the franchise to call his group "al-Qaida in Mesopotamia," he was granted it with only a few admonitions.

Most fascinating of all is the suggestion that Zarqawi was all along receiving help from the mullahs in Iran. He certainly seems to have been able to transit their territory (Herat is on the Iranian border with Afghanistan) and to replenish his forces by the same route. If this suggestive connection is proved, as Weaver suggests it will be, then we have the Shiite fundamentalists in Iran directly sponsoring the murderer of their co-religionists in Iraq. This in turn would mean that the Iranian mullahs stood convicted of the most brutish and cynical irresponsibility, in front of their own people, even as they try to distract attention from their covert nuclear ambitions. That would be worth knowing. And it would become rather difficult to argue that Bush had made them do it, though no doubt the attempt will be made.

If we had withdrawn from Iraq already, as the "peace" movement has been demanding, then one of the most revolting criminals of all time would have been able to claim that he forced us to do it. That would have catapulted Iraq into Stone Age collapse and instated a psychopathic killer as the greatest Muslim soldier since Saladin. As it is, the man is ignominiously dead and his dirty connections a lot closer to being fully exposed. This seems like a good day's work to me.

****

Good day's work indeed. Christopher Hitchens writes an absolute bulls-eye article here (on the same day of the incident!) that speaks for me on the subject in ways I can't articulate. Not only is Hitchens a masterful writer, he's a masterful public speaker as well, a rare combination. This phrase:"Religious fanatics are schismatic by definition." is a thing of beauty.

While a lot remains to be done, this is obviously a big, big step in the right direction. For progress to continue, this guy was numero uno on the 72 Virgins for Islamofascists Tour. Particularly sweet justice that his own rats ratted him out, too. Nice touch. A good day for Iraq, a good day for the free world, a good day for Good, a good day for the Coalition, a bad day for Satan, and a bad day for his supporters and admirers, secret or otherwise.

i thought cnn's coverage was somewhat humorous.

well, mainly just this list from their main page....

http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/6949/cnn8mx.jpg

Well I was wrong, I know he was arrested while working with the Qutbist forces in Egypt.

hahaha, you should have read the article ;)
It wasn't even our government saying it. This is the basis for the claim in the exclusive dossier:
OK, so how much faith should I put in bin Laden's truthfullness, bodyhammer?
If you make a compelling argument for believing him, then I'll change my mind.

smooth, considering Bin Laden has never liked America from the get-go, I don't see why he would ever accept aid from an American source. Oh and let me ask you this: if Bin Laden said himself that he supposedly received training or whatever from the CIA, would you need a compelling argument to believe him?

I don't view this as terribly important. It is symbolic, perhaps, but not in any meaningfull way. Symbolism is hyped up way too much in situations such as this. His death will change nothing. His followers will find someone else to fight for. The violence will not decline for any meaningfull period of time. Iraq will not be calmed. There will never be a functioning democratic society there. Not in the way the U.S would like there to be. The "terrorists" are killed and they kill us back. What makes anyone think the U.S. is going to be able to stop this?

Nothing. The hope is that eventually the Iraqis will be able to stop it on their own through their police system instead of America. Slow process, but that kind of thing takes time.

We have killed a major terrorist leader in Iraq. We will continue to kill major terrorist leaders in Iraq. Five years from now we will likelly be killing major terrorist leaders in Iraq. Perhaps in ten years we can turn over the killing of major terrorist leaders in Iraq....to the Iraqis.

Or....we may be killing Iraqis who are Major Terrorist leaders in Iraq. This killing while an important boost politically....borders on irrelevant in the actual "War on Terrorism", and in fact may simply end up a recruiting tool for the bad guys. In my opinion we are fighting a war that cannot be won with Bombs, but hey....what do I know.

For the record all aid for the Russian-Afghan war was funded through the Pakistani ISI, America had no discretion as to how it was allotted. This is ofcourse due to the whole premise that the Mujahdeen movement would have been without merit it America "the Great Satan" had a direct hand in what was a conflict portrayed as an Islamic/Arab struggle.

Something that I wonder about is how the treatment of his body is viewed by the extremists or faithfully practicing Muslims even. From what I gather, there are certain ways that the body must be treated even including how long after death the burial should be. Is the autopsy something that is going to further fuel extremist hatred towards the US? Will moderate Muslims understand why the US is examining the remains so closely? Should the US even give two shits about any of these religious practices? Is this even anything to wonder about or is it the mainstream media’s influence on how I digest reports about things of this nature?

Or maybe he was so covered in dust, blood and other crud that they had to wash his face to ID him.

I’m not saying that the war is not being sanitized; I think it is, but some sanitization is needed.

The same thing was done with Saddam's sons. The washing wasn't necessary for the military to ID him, but it was needed for the public to be satisfied.

I was going to mention the Saddam family treatment.

It isn't easy to tell who's who with blood & grime everywhere. A mortician's makeup job would be my idea of sanitizing.

This guy would have been appropriate for a plywood casket propped outside the General Store.

Bodyhammer86. the statement above is a nice intro to this 1998 Mainstream media report:
To dismiss the possibility that 9/11 was the "Pearl Harbor" that PNAC said would be necessary to implement it's agenda, and that Zarqawi was entirely, or almost entirely, an American "creation" that debuted in Powell's Feb. 5, 2003, is difficult, and probably not in my best interest to do.
I can't tell when the government is telling me the truth. How can you, how is it that some of you show no doubt?

Isn't it curious, that, when they couldn't "catch" Zarqawi, he was reduced by the same folks who bring you this "bombing Op"....to a clownish, incompetent stooge? Which is it? Stooge or death of a bogey man signifigant enough to turn the tide of war?
Yeah, General Lynch, it does "make you wonder". I wonder how some of the folks who post here know what to embrace, or dispute, and how much of what they embrace is more about how they "feel" than about what the facts vs. the contradictions and later exposure of outright lies by their government officials should affect opinion.

Remember the "mobile bio weapons trailers"? They were described by Powell at the UN, in the same presentation where he rolled out the al Zarqawi / Al Qaeda connection.

Say....has anybody even wondered if this Zarqawi corpse has a leg missing, or not? Wasn't treatment of his leg, the reason that he was in Baghdad in 2002 for medical treatment. That was the story that our government fed us to link Saddam to Al Qaeda. Do any of these questions even matter, in a "breaking news" environment, like this one?
If it matters more to you that your expectations are "met" by government disclosures, than if the disclosures are actually true, what does this show you about your own POV...might it actually be that the result is your own, personal "Blowback", as a consequence of too much patriotic feeling, and not enough curiosity?

Both WaPo and NYT are reporting the above claim. Don't y'all hate it when the story changes?

NYT article hosted by TO

host,

for someone questioning eveyone's viewpoints, what about yours? you latch on to every single piece of dissenting information you can find, regardless of its source or validity. your "story" has not been proven by any means, and you assail others for believing a story that has much more evidence going for it. if it has a remote chance of making the us gov or pres. bush look bad, you're all for it. you come into every arguement from the same doorway, with the same slant, regardless of topic.

without a bit of objectivity, how can you expect to be taken seriously?

docbungle, I didn't make the Bush administrations record or reputation, they did.

I've got plenty of company....and frankly, I don't understand why you "raise the bar" so high as to what news reports I should post....how much of what Bush and Cheney have told us in their official statments, turned out to be "proven"? My statements and the links that I've posted on this forum are much more closer to the truth than the crap that has come out of their mouths, especially concerning issues of war and their efforts to uphold the protections specified to protect the rights of the people in the Consitution.
I think that your criticism of me is misplaced. Shooting the messenger is a poor substitute for challenging and questioning everything that our "leaders" disclose to us. Their record for truth telling and avoiding making deliberately misleading statements, sucks. How should I react to what they've done and what they've said. I'm concerned that I've not been nearly critical or questioning, enough, given their breach of trust in matters as serious as war and the handling of intelligence and classified information.

Have a look:

For myself, I don't like this bomb-suspects-from-the-sky business. As I mentioned on another forum - if this is allowed under the new Iraqi constitution, that's a problem.

I'm also wondering how many places they bombed until they got the right one?

<b>Why does former CBS News foreign correspondent, Tom Fenton, "hate" America?</b>

Maybe it has something to do with American's "knowing what they Know", despite the "facts". Walter Pincus of the WaPo is one of the most earnest and reliable, political news reporters of our era, and he sez:
The Washington Post article, excerpted above, was published on June 10. Please click on the link and read the entire text, then read it again. Then read the posts on this thread. I'm no Walter Pincus, not by a long shot. But I'll go to my grave, trying to be someone as far from Tom Fenton's description of an <b>American who is fed that "which fits what they already know"</b> , as I possibly can be.......

How about you? You've made a special effort, you're reading a thread on a politics forum. Make the extra effort and take the extra time to never accept what the government tells you, just because it seems to fit what you think that you know. Unless you question everything, you'll just be a repository for what they've told you, and you'll be able to repeat it all like a parrot, but you'll only "know" what the government wants you to "know".

So which American do you think that you more closely resemble, the one who Tom Fenton describes on page 20 in his book, or are you more like Ray McGovern, who had this "in person exchange" with Rumsfeld, last month:
In response to a segment in an earlier post, on page #1 on this thread:

The above probably is an accurate description of the attitude held by the Pentagon, and by the White House, too....but dammit....I'm not in the military and, neither are you, anymore, reconmike. Is it even "American" to quietly accept a situation like you described? A "right" has to be exercised, now and again, and maybe the response from the government will come in the form of tear gas, or a nightstick over the head, or even a rifle butt in the teeth, but if we don't bother to question them, and to speak our mind, then what did the soldiers who gave their lives at Iwo, or at Bastogne, fight and die to protect?

Is it unfair to use the words 'Al Qaida in Iraq" and 'Pentagon' interchangably, especially after the 'Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi' article on the first page? How can we be sure that this new internet posting proclaiming the new leader of al qaida in Iraq is anything other than more BS from the Pentagon?

That's just it: we don't know. Al-Muhajer may not even exist. Al-Muhajer could be a short order cook who once was in the same area code as an al Qaeda member. The fact of the matter is that there is no more reason to trust these reports...which means we either wait for another terrorist attack or for absolutely nothing to happen by a ficticious terrorist. It's all a sick game. al-Zarqawi was a nobody until the Pentagon (or was it the DoD? I can't keep it all straight) alledged that he was the missing link between Iraq and the al Qaeda.

I don't know....so how can you know??? Time Magazine reports yesterday that a small Delta Force team of U.S. soldiers was close enough to determine that Zarqawi did not leave the house before they called in an airstrike. Today, Gen. Caldwell says that U.S. troops did not arrive until 28 minutes after the air strike, just 24 minutes before Zarqawi died.

The U.S. Army tells us that Zarqawi died of lung injuries, alleged "proof" that he was not "beaten to death", but is it "proof" that he was not beaten?

What can one say, except "Good Job"?

There will of course be another one, but if the Palestinians continue to self implode and Israel finishes its wall or *gasp* if they pull their collective heads out and actually negotiate peace with Israel, then we'll finally start on the road to a lasting peace.

Host,

Honestly, I'm not sure if it makes any difference to me whether he was beaten to death or bombed to death. I mean, they dropped the bomb on the house specifically because HE was there - so whether the killing was close range or by pushing a button, it almost amounts to an assassination... It seems to me that this matters more than the exact mechanism of his demise (if it matters at all). Really, I see this as a non-issue.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a person that thinks the US has license to kill, imprison, and torture anyone we want, but I am rather apathetic about whether troops beat Zarqawi before he died, or even if they killed him by beating him. After all, they dropped a bomb on him, and that was intended to kill him. And for the record, whether Zarqawi was incompetent or not, and whether his mayhem was a construction of the DoD or not doesn't matter to me either. He was someone who either killed innocents well or poorly, and for that I think he was fair game.

I guess I'd just rather see us pursue questions that are a little more meaningful...

The only reasonable way I can interpret your quotes, save concluding they are outright contradictions (which isn't out of the realm of possibility, but the following is an alternate reading), is to understand that the second reference is to a small group of team members that the speaker did not include in his operatational definition of "coalition forces."

it's entirely reasonable, I think, to understand that there are "coalition forces" as an entity seperate or over and above smaller units (e.g., Delta Force, or whathaveyou) that may or may not be contained within that signifier when the person thinking about "coalition forces" is speaking.

Be they special forces or new privates out of basic training, I'd think the first Americans on the scene would realize "dead men tell no tales" and not beat the shit out of him. For the most part, our Marines and sodliers are better trained that what the media leads us to think.

Good. I can only hope. And he still got off lightly. his head should have been sawed off slowly. leaving the spine and arteries intact then plucked one by one all while being pissed on.

Just one.

ubertuber, If I was confident that the government had given us enough information to make realistic determinations about Zarqawi, or about anything else related to Iraq, or the unrelated "war on terr-urrrr", I would not react to this "news" the only way, under the circumstances, that I find myself reacting. I'm taking this tale in, as I would a "cartoon". I don't know what to believe, and I don't know how anyone else knows, either....not with this "history:
<b>With the above "history", as context...(How can we know where we are, if we don't know where we've been?) and the following denials, disclaimers, and revisions, how can a rational mind represent that any "conclusions" are even possible ?</b>
If I allowed myself to be "sucked in", I could react with wonderment over the fact that all possible efforts weren't undertaken to attempt to apprehend "Al Qaeda's #1" in Iraq, "alive"...for the wealth of intelligence that interrogating him might bring. I could react to the bombing death of a small child as "collateral damage", etc.

Instead, my sensibilities are still smarting from earlier disclosures that the NY Times reporter Judy Miller planted false WMD stories that were handed to her By Ahmed Chalabi, probably directed by PNAC. I recall the false certainty with which the Bush administration embellished the false "mobile biological weapons trailers" story, and the "Op" about the Zarqawi propaganda campaign that was fed to NY Times', Dexter Filkins, via selective leaks. That "Op" included a fake Zarqawi "letter".

I note that some folks here believe that the NY Times is "liberal", even after all of the disclosures that it's reporters and editors have been so "incurious" when it came time to publish what should have been suspected as blatant propaganda. I note that so many who post here, have their "minds made up", and I have to wonder....and post....over and over....how they can do that.
What do they "pick out", that they know to be "true"? Last week, the Haditha atrocities story and a deteriorating stock market dominated the news.

The....as if a switch was thrown, the government was able to shift attention, almost instantaneously...to the story that it wanted us to focus on....the still changing story of our military's "success" in "bombing" the bogey man that was created by our government's own propaganda.

The "timing" of the new "our military get's it's evil-doer" story, was just as convenient. a few days ago, as this scenario was, 2 years ago:
....and then....as now...almost as if he was paid to take the stage on cue, just 12 days after the Abu Ghraib controversy was reported, this convenient, and I'm sure....(I'm not....but too many of you are..) "story" came along..the "bogeyman, Zarqawi", to deflect attention away from U.S. war crimes du jour:
If the folks who really should read this post, have even gotten this far into it, I'm sure many of them are shaking their heads and muttering, ooohhhh...that "host", why does he hate American soooo much? My question is...why do you believe that our government's executive branch has so much, coincidental, fortuituous luck? Their christian god must have been smiling down on them when he gave them "Zarqawi"....a co-operative and unimginably "evil" adversary, who made attention on Abu Ghraib, "Vaporize" when he was incompetent enough to conveniently, personally behead Nick Berg, video tape the crime, and then post it online for the world to see, just at the right time to rehabilitate the reputation of our government. <b>If I can convince even one of you to be more curious....more skeptical....if it's even possible!</b>

Yeah.

God did it for the GOP.

And Zarqawi was "invented" to deflect attention from Abu Ghraib.

And Nick Berg...I don't even know what you're trying to say there. Are you implying Zarqawi was too competent to be bombed to death, because he was succesfull at beheadings and showing them on the internet? You said incompetent, but the entire sentence doesn't make any sense. You had to have mistyped something in there somewhere.

At least you are admitting "Z" is dead now? Or at least more than likely dead?

Although you have listed an impressive array of non-sequiturs regarding the entire event, and truthout.org is blowing their usual amount of hot air, this request to prove a negative is the icing on the cake.

Pray tell what "alleged proof" WOULD satisfy you? That a beating DIDN'T happen, I mean?

(Sigh)-- Just remembered that pointing out logical fallacies is a "personal attack."

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:
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:
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.......

Host are you trying to move this to paranoia?

Half the threads in politics are paranoia. sorry. :confused:

Seaver, stevo.....

I won't settle for participating in a political forum where discussion degrades to a level where everyone regurgitates the opinions shaped entirely by the government's prevailing message, just because that version is repeated the most by our leaders.....I want a "balanced" view, even it causes me to be less
"sure" of what I "know". WTF is the sense of being "sure" of things that probably aren't true?

I'm trying to "raise the bar", by highlighting the "contradictions" in the news reporting that reaches us, versus what most of us "think" that we "know", and the results are an "eye opener", in their implications.

So too.....are both of your responses......

Host you dont want a "balanced view", dont even attempt to claim it. If it were balanced you wouldnt search for everything "good" that happens is a conspiracy, and everything "bad" is actually because of government action, and the blaming of the people who did do it is an attempt to fool us.

I wont settle for a conversation where theories are thrown out with little more evidence than stock prices or the fact that Bush's polls go up after Americans died on 9/11. I wont settle for conspiracy theories of voter fraud because your candidate lost, based on machines that weren't even used in the conflicted states. I wont settle for your conspiracy posts in politics where they lead to no discussion. You try to give us "eye openers" where it only leads to people giving a chuckle and ignoring your post.

http://www.oldmatador.com/apb/icon_potkettle.gif

Seaver, if something in here belongs in Paranoia, it will be moved to Paranoia. I'm not a mod, and neither are you or host. If you don't agree with something, then say so and explain why. I remember this old story about Einstien. He had come up with one of his brilliant theories, and germans scientists started a smear campaign against him saying that he was insane and a jewish sympathizer, etc...so Einstien simply responded, (paraphrased) "All you need to prove me wrong is one fact." My point? If you want to argue against someone, just present your argument. IMHO.

Interesting point.