An Analysis You Should Read: Is Al Zarqawi Real? Alive? Or is He and It A Big Hoax

Joseph at Cannonfire brings up the whole issue of our bogeyman-izing al Zarqawi, calling him Osama's man in Iraq and why people like highly respected journalist Robert Fisk feel that all of this is a fake, that al-Zarqawi may have been dead for at least more than three years.

You don't have to agree with Joseph's points, but you damned well probably should read it and think about the points he raises. Thank you, Joseph!

Snippy-snip:

People still snicker whenever anyone suggests that the American intelligence community has, in the past, manipulated the American press. Yet nobody laughed at Donald Rumsfeld when he claimed that
"The terrorists, Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri, those people have media committees.

They are actively out there trying to manipulate the press in the United States."Rumsfeld did not point to a single story in the U.S. media influenced by the putative Zarqawi "media committee."

How could he? His assertion is inane on its face; a couple of criminals despised by all Americans could never "spin" CBS or the New York Times.

Is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi himself a manipulation? As we discussed in a recent post, the Washington Post revealed that the "threat" posed by this alleged Al Qaeda leader was largely the creation of a military PSYOPS unit. The propaganda campaign targeted both the foreign press and the U.S. "home audience." Also targeted were our troops: When they unleashed "Whiskey Pete" on civilians in Fallujah, they did so in the belief that they were fighting Zarqawi.On the same day the Post story appeared, Bush -- in a speech -- cited as genuine a Zarqawi letter now known to be fake.

Journalist Robert Fisk feels that Zarqawi may have died years ago. The Jordanian has not been seen in years; he did not communicate with his family when his mother died; he has made no attempt to help his wife.Fisk is hardly the only skeptic to make such a claim -- see, for example, this page of links. (Note: A number of the links go to pages I consider less than credible.)There are numerous mysteries surrounding this alleged Al Qaeda mastermind: The many reported deaths...the leg that either was or was not amputated...his alleged presence in the questioned Nick Berg decapitaion video...and more.

I cannot discuss all of these matters here -- although I should note in passing that, if memory serves, we never did receive official confirmation that Zarqawi's voice was heard on the Berg video. One would think that the CIA possesses the ability to nail that sort of idenitifaction.Now we have a new video featuring Zarqawi -- a man who has died many a death, a man claimed by the august Washington Post to be largely a PSYOPS-driven myth. The timing of this video release, so soon after the Post story, seems rather convenient. A copy of the Zarqawi video can be found here. (I can't help noting that one of the jihadist fighting songs sounds an awful lot like an old WWI ditty: "Skitta-marink-a-dink-a-dink-a-parlez-vous...")

If you're well-read in the lore of intelligence operations, you may have come across accounts of faked videos involving look-a-like actors. I will discuss one notorious example in a future post. For now, let us note in passing that we do have one confirmed incident of a faked beheading video put together by a young hoaxer named Benjamin Vanderford, who seems to have operated out of bizarre personal motives. If a mere civilian can create such a thing, a military psychological operations unit could surely do a more professional job.