Does Zarqawi read the Washington Post ?

[Guest guest]

SharinSharAlike

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 01:01:04 EDT

The one-legged dead guy hobbling around making videos now

 

 

 

 

My comment has been posted at the Guardian regarding this article

today if anyone is interested in reading what I had to say. It is a

ways down on the page -- under Sharinsharalike name. Wow -- a long

link. LOL -- well, anyway, my comment on this is there at the Guardian

today.

 

 

 

 

https://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mt/comment_handler.cgi?entry_id=002102 & gu_t\

icket=tQ49OfVPV8wJcEET7aOHAAZBOrFJo1NFoKDrG%2bPkzN%2fewFAaV1sCTcL%2f3PpN9FSCB%2f\

zoVB50390ioBUvxfbglZR6%2fSMwZvCsuABpCYbFFp4xa4pJdG1Ynf%2fbvFw%2bEvUF1KJxxs0RANU%\

2bF5H7BBSylA%3d%3d

 

 

 

Does Zarqawi read the Washington Post ?

 

If he's still alive, he'll read that the US military has been trying

to magnify his role in Iraq in order to justify their assault on Iraqi

cities.

Sami Ramadani

 

Articles

 

All Sami Ramadani articles

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April 28, 2006 07:50 PM |

 

Arch terrorist and blood curdling executioner, Jordanian citizen Abu

Musab Al-Zarqawi, has at last obliged and supplied the US-led

occupation forces in Iraq, and the world at large, a frontal and very

clear picture of himself.

 

Along with many friends and commentators, I often wondered whether

Zarqawi was real, and if so, was he still alive, particularly that the

CIA had claimed, before the 2003 invasion, that his leg (which one I

know not) was amputated in a Baghdad hospital. What are the chances of

survival of a one-legged-man, hopping from one besieged and bombarded

Iraqi city to another? This, after the US-led occupation forces have,

during the three years captured or killed, at the last count, at least

40 men described as " right hand man " or " second in command " or

" deputy " or " top aide " ? (See report by the brilliant independent

American journalist Dahr Jamail) Newsweek investigations into Zarqawi

left it puzzled two years ago:

 

" The stark fact is that we don't even know for sure how many legs Abu

Mussab al-Zarqawi has, let alone whether the Jordanian terrorist,

purportedly tied to al Qaeda, is really behind the latest outrages in

Iraq. " (Newsweek, 7 March 2004)

 

The CIA appears to keep a keen eye on the anatomy of famous

terrorists. There were many media reports, before the 2003 invasion of

Iraq, that Zarqawi's line manager, Bin Laden, had one kidney diseased

or removed (which one they did not say) at an Abu Dhabi Hospital. But

I digress.

 

Zarqawi's new video and pictures appeared on 24 April 2006 on

Al-Jazeera (Arab satellite TV station based in Qatar where the

headquarters of the US forces in Middle East are based), exactly two

weeks after the Washington Post published a report entitled " Military

Plays Up Role of Zarqawi. Jordanian Painted As Foreign Threat To

Iraq's Stability. " The report stressed:

 

" The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the

role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military

documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has

raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials

believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush

administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the

Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. " (Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, April 10,

2006)

 

I am indebted to Gabriele Zamparini for drawing my attention to the

above. Gabriele has a website on which he blogs his exchanges with

journalists and editors of newspapers, radio and TV. The exchanges are

very instructive and a must read on Iraq. Gabriele's most recent

letter, to the Independent, included the above quote and was entitled

" Does Robert Fisk read the Independent ? " Unlike the paper he writes

in, the distinguished reporter has cast serious doubt on whether

Zarqawi exists.

 

But whether Zarqawi does exist or is the product of a faceless

disinformation department, bunkered deep inside the occupation's

headquarters at the Green Zone in Baghdad, what is certain is that the

Pentagon has unfortunately succeeded in convincing a lot of people

that the Iraqi patriotic resistance is one and the same as Zarqawi's

terrorist gang. Zarqawi has also proved useful as a pretext for

besieging and bombarding a number of Iraqi cities. Infamously, he was

cited as the reason for the US forces destroying of the city of

Falluja, where the US forces used chemical weapons.

 

The American people (also known by the US administration as the " U.S.

Home Audience " ) are addressed by the Pentagon in a pretty unique

fashion. This is how it works: you first get a Pentagon-paid person in

the US to write an item in English on how wonderful things are in

Iraq; secondly you get another a Pentagon paid person to translate the

item into Arabic; thirdly, you pass the item to an Iraqi

journalist/editor, in the free and democratic Iraq, and ask him/her to

publish it under his/her name in return for scores of dollars;

fourthly you get the article translated back into English in the US

and feed it to the American and world public through the Pentagon's

propaganda machine and the obliging media. Conscious of its role in

convincing the American people of the WMD lies, and for which it

apologised, the New York Times headlined the revelation prominently

last December: " U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers. "

The disturbing report also referred to the illegality of the practice

within the US:

 

" The Government Accountability Office found this year that the Bush

administration had violated the law by producing pseudo news reports

that were later used on American television stations with no

indication that they had been prepared by the government. But no law

prohibits the use of such covert propaganda abroad. "

 

Presumably the Bush administration felt that if it was legal to

deceive the world public, why not try it on the American people?

Besides, if the whole war was illegal what is the harm in illegally

reporting on it?

 

So, has the US stopped the illegal practice since the NYT reported on

it last year? Not according to the Washington Post report of 10 April

2006:

 

" For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi

media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi's role in the

insurgency. The documents explicitly list the " U.S. Home Audience " as

one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.

 

Some senior intelligence officers believe Zarqawi's role may have been

overemphasized by the propaganda campaign, which has included

leaflets, radio and television broadcasts, Internet postings and at

least one leak to an American journalist. Although Zarqawi and other

foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted deadly bombing attacks, they

remain " a very small part of the actual numbers, " Col. Derek Harvey,

who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq and then was one

of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff of

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth,

Kan., last summer. "

 

I would only add that the US occupation forces admit to a monthly

average of 2,500 military attacks (down from about 3000/month last

year) against the occupation forces. Zarqawi claims a handful of

operations a month, mostly against Iraqi targets. However, the

terrorist atrocities, some claimed by Zarqawi and others blamed on

him, routinely make the headlines across the world.

 

And before any reader asks " does Sami Ramadani read the Guardian ? "

The answer is yes, I do!

 

Comment is free: Does Zarqawi read the Washington Post ?