Reply #27: Ahhh yes….more myth than man….. [View All]

[peterh]

Is he a one man or a group….
Does he have one leg or two….
Is he in one place or everywhere….
Is he part of al-Qaeda or separate….


Well, if there’s one thing we know for sure….it’s that Rummy has no friggin’ idea himself…..


http://www.peterbergen.com/clients/PeterBergen/pbergen.nsf/Web00002Show?OpenForm&ParentUNID=332E4ACF3A857A2E85256EBF0063AB66

"The central question the administration has failed to answer is: Was there guidance or direction from the Al Qaeda leadership to Zarqawi?" Mr. Cressey, the former counterterrorism official, told me. "The evidence presented so far is there was not." At a briefing on June 17, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld seemed to agree with that assessment, saying of Mr. Zarqawi that "someone could legitimately say he's not Al Qaeda."

Mr. Zarqawi's connections to Saddam Hussein are equally tenuous. After fleeing Afghanistan, he probably spent as much time living in Iran as in Iraq. What Mr. Cheney described as the "poisons factory" Mr. Zarqawi ran was actually in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq, an area protected by American jets since 1991. Mr. Rumsfeld had more control than Saddam Hussein over that part of Iraq.

As for the medical treatment Mr. Zarqawi supposedly received in Baghdad, for some time American officials thought it was a leg amputation. However, the footage of Mr. Zarqawi in the video of Mr. Berg's execution seems to show a man in possession of both limbs. And last week Mr. Zarqawi released an audiotape on a jihadist Web site containing a blistering critique of Saddam Hussein, whom he described as a "devil" who "killed the innocent."

Mr. Zarqawi is a ruthless murderer, and capturing or killing him would be a major step toward pacifying Iraq. But if he is, as President Bush has said, the "best evidence" of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, the administration's case is a weak one.