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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 subsid iary. Responsibility for numerous bombings and atrocities has been ascri bed to him; or, in other cases, he, his supporters, or those speaking fo r him seem happy to take responsibility themselves. But it is hard not to see this information in the light of the fairly con stant tendency through the War on Terror to build up varous Terrorist Ma sterminds, who become the focus of most or all news reportage, then trai l off into nothing.
And with Zarqawi particularly there is a w elter of contradictory and often difficult-to-credit information about h im that invites further suspicion. Remember, we first heard of Zarqawi because his alleged 2002 trip to a Ba ghdad hospital to have his leg amputated was the sign of Saddam's dallia nce with al Qaida figures. So, assum ing 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 b e dead. Often, if you read between the lines, it's not clear that we kno w enough about Zarqawi to be able to identify him even if we had a relat ively intact body to examine. In a similarly odd fashion, second-in-comm ands seem to be caught with some regularity, only to be replaced by othe r long-time second-in-commands. So probably or perhaps some of this information has been nailed down more securely than I've suggested. And if so, please let me know -- the questions I'm asking here are not purel y rhetorical. But let's recognize that Zarqawi's enemies and his supporters -- probably , the man himself above all -- have a common interest in building up his reputation and his centrality. The Bush administration has consistently tried to portray al Qaida as a distinct, coherent and hierarchical orga nization, even in the face of evidence that, since the Afghan War, it ha s fragmented (or metastasized) into something more like a movement than an organization. This is particularly the case in Iraq where the adminis tration has sought to bundle various sorts of terrorist and paramilitary violence into the al Qaida basket. So building up Zarqawi into the Iraq 's al Qaida boss must be tempting. In a case as chaotic and bloody as Iraq, the mind naturally looks for hidden organization and hierarchy, definable culpability, particularly if you're the one on the line for s topping the violence. And there has been a relat ively constant stream of terrorist attacks around the world -- Bali, Lon don, Madrid, Amman, Riyadh, the list goes on and on. The perpetrators al l seem at least inspired by bin Laden or bin Ladenism and many of the ri ngleaders were trained in Afghanistan before the war. But I'm curious-bordering-on-suspicious about just what we know about Zar qawi, how much specific information we have about who he is and what att acks he may be responsible for.
article which appeared last year in Newsday contains one of the few detailed skeptical accounts of his role ... Whenever a car bombing, beheading or other spectacular act of violence t akes place in Iraq these days, American officials are quick to blame Ab u Musab al-Zarqawi. But according to an Arab intelligence assessment, al-Zarqawi is not capa ble of carrying out the level of attacks in Iraq that he has claimed an d that American officials have blamed on him. Al-Zarqawi's own militant group has fewer than 100 members inside Iraq, although al-Zarqawi has close ties to a Kurdish Islamist group with at least several hundred members, according to two reports produced by an Arab intelligence service. Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam has provided dozens of recruits for suicide bombings since the United States-led invasion of Iraq, the reports say . And while US forces relentlessly pound the Sunni insurgent stronghold s of Fallujah and Samarra, claiming to hit al-Zarqawi safe houses, the elusive militant could be hiding in the northern city of Mosul. The Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi, 37, has used the media effectively to inf late his role in the Iraqi insurgency. In recent months, he and his sup porters have claimed responsibility for scores of suicide bombings, att acks on US and Iraqi forces, kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners, and coordinated uprisings in several Iraqi cities. Al-Zarqawi is thought likely responsible for the beheadings of American contractor Nicholas Berg and several other foreigners. But the sheer le vel of other attacks that he has claimed is not consistent with the num ber of supporters he has inside Iraq and his ability to move around the country, according to the analysis. The reports say former members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime are responsible - directly or by payin g others - for many of the attacks, especially sophisticated roadside b ombings and ambushes of US troops. The assessment contradicts many of the Bush administration's statements about al-Zarqawi and his terrorist network. I'm interested in seeing articles -- from reputa ble news organizations -- which give specific information about Zarqawi and what reliable information we have connecting him to these various at tacks. Or are we falling victim to the ironic ally overlapping needs of Bush administration officials and Zarqawi hims elf to over-inflate his role and give us all a highly distorted impressi on of just what is going on in Iraq?
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