I'm sorry, have to ask, does anyone believe Zarqawi actually exists??

[clem_c_rock]

I know he probably exists - I just don't think he's ever stepped one foot in Iraq. He's the bogeyman the US needs to justify every bombing operation where there's massive collateral damage.

One minute we're told he's behind a car bombing in Iraq, the next day he's blamed for the foiled chemical attack in Jordon, the next day he's a suspect in the Madrid train bombings.

Then he shows up in a beheading video (you know the ones where they saw off a guys head and there's not one sign of struggle and hardly any blood), w/ no hint of a wooden leg and fully masked. Yet they know it's him?

It strikes me as one of the most pathetic propaganda attempts that's ever been shoved down our throats.

Am I a paranoid CT?

[Francis]

1. riverbend doubts his existence n/t

[jpgray]

2. I believe he exists or once existed

Is he guilty of everything or even most of what he's been blamed for? Eh, not likely. He's just a twenty-first century Snowball.

[Padraig18]

3. I think he exists. n/t

[Maple]

4. Seems to be

a sort of Iraqi Robin Hood...or Scarlet Pimpernel.

Iraqis want no connection to Al Qaeda, so this is their hero image perhaps.

Or maybe the Americans made him up, so they have somebody to blame.

Probably some minor character at some point, and the whole thing has been exaggerated.

[Filimon]

5. evidence?

Do you have any evidence that would lead you to believe he does not exist?

I suppose we could use the same argument against any purported terrorist/group who publicly claims responsibility for their actions.

Maybe they are not who they say they are. Maybe. I don't know - do you?

It seems that terrorist groups like to publicize their atrocities to the widest possible audience - both supporters and enemies - as a simple PR strategy. This strategy seems to support the existence of Zarqawi - or at least a group running under his banner. Even the terrorists and islamic radicals support his existence and know him personally. OBL seems to think he exists.

On the other hand, if you think it might just be a zionist/neocon plot to discredit the freedom fighters, then that logic would call into question the existence of terrorists in general. Maybe 9/11 really was a neocon plot?

Maybe. But My common sense tells me that this is SOP for terrorists and this Zarqawi fellow is just another dangerous sicko.

[clem_c_rock]

7. Well, here's some things I've dug up

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4466324
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4446084/

http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/terrorists/fugitives.htm -->>Don't understand why he's not on this list??

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO405B.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200410/s1220237.htm
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FK13Ak04.html
http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=132&fArticleId=2302694
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FJ15Ak02.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/112004Chin/112004chin.html

I tend to believe he's part of a counter insurgent propaganda operation.

And thing's like this: http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/112004Chin/112004chin.html

the Lavon affair, the Reishtag fire (on and on), make me believe that a majority of terrorist operations are fabricated for the gain of agendas that never fly in the face of Public Opinion.

[DulceDecorum]

27. Jake the Fake

existed.
He was a regular on the Rolf Harris Show way way back.
He, too, had an extra leg.
I saw it myself.
So I have no difficulty whatsoever in believing in the existence of Zarqawi.

[meganmonkey]

12. It should be easier to prove he DOES exist than he doesn't, but

I personally haven't seen any proof, at least nothing more conclusive than the 'proof' of WMDs.

Here's a lot of talk that he may not exist, circumstantial as it may be. I just did a quick google search and I don't have time to weed through it all.

------------------

"We want to know what proof there is that Zarqawi is in Fallujah," Hatem Maddab, a member of a Fallujah negotiating committee, told Arabic Al Jazeera television, adding that the government had now halted peace talks.

US warplanes have repeatedly struck at targets the military says are hideouts used by Zarqawi and his followers in the Sunni Muslim city 50 kilometres west of Baghdad.

"Zarqawi is like the weapons of mass destruction that America invaded Iraq for," Mr Maddab said, alluding to Saddam Hussein's arsenal of banned arms that proved not to exist.

"We hear about that name (Zarqawi), but he is not here. More than 20 or 30 homes have been bombarded because of this Zarqawi and his followers but only women, children and the elderly have been affected," the negotiator added.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200410/s1220237.htm
--------------------
Zarqawi is suspected of direct involvement in the kidnap and beheading of several foreigners in Iraq - even of wielding the knife himself. Washington has also accused the 37-year-old Jordanian radical of masterminding a string of spectacular suicide bombings in Iraq, and of being linked to Al-Qaeda.

But many question his very existence while others insist that, even if he is in Iraq, he is unlikely to have the central role that US intelligence claims.



http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9§ion=0&article=53459&d=26&m=10&y=2004

--------------

Some observers however, believe that Zarqawi is more myth than man. "The Daily Telegraph" website, www.telegraph.co.uk, published an article on 4 October that claimed that U.S. military intelligence agents in Iraq were paying unreliable sources for unverified information about Zarqawi. "We were basically paying up to $ 10,000 a time to opportunists, criminals, and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the lynchpin of just about every attack in Iraq," one source described as a U.S. agent told the newspaper.



http://www.tharwaproject.com/English/Main-Sec/NetWatch/NW_11_15_04/Kupchinsky%202.htm

------------------

The pretext for this barbarity is that the US intended to kill a “terrorist” by the name of al-Zarqawi. According to the people of Fallujah, “al-Zarqawi does not exist. He is a made-up figure”. The US Occupation forces in Iraq have been claiming that al-Zarqawi and his Arab and non-Iraqi Muslim fighters are hiding out in Fallujah. Dr Muhammad al-Hamadani, a Fallujah resident told Aljazeera News that he had no knowledge about any non-Iraqi fighters in the town.

It appears that al-Zarqawi is replacing the old and elusive pretext of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Unlike the WMD pretext, the al-Zarqawi pretext is dangerous because the one-leg elusive man can move site. In other word, if al-Zarqawi is not found in Fallujah, the Bush Administration can say that he run to another city.



http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-hassan071104.htm

[LynnTheDem]

13. SOP for freedom fighters when their country has been invaded & occupied,

and after 100,000+ of their citizens have been killed, and after Abu Ghraib and other assorted American-perpetrated atrocities, is to use whatever means at hand to fight off the occupiers and any collaborators.

We did it during the American Revolution; France did it during WW2 under German occupation; Iraq did it under Britain's first occupation of Iraq.

Terrorism is a tactic that anyone can use. It's especially commonly used when you don't have weapons equal to or better than your enemy's.

If Iraqis had tanks and 2000 lb bombs they could drop from warplanes and gunships etc, they'd use them instead of RPGs and IEDs and suicide bombings.

Well accept bush's Allawi; he liked using suicide bombings in Iraq when he was a CIA-backed terrorist.

[clem_c_rock]

14. Right on - I try to bring this up as much as possible.

Great points

[LynnTheDem]

15. And I bet, like myself, you find it incredible we're in a "war on a noun"

and most Americans (well, all rightwingnuts and some non-rightwingnuts) don't even bloody well know WTF "terror", "terrorism" and "terrorist" mean.

Thankfully, after the first bush Doctrine pre-emptive strike of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the US government did know what the various nouns meant, and didn't decide to wage a war on kamikaze airplanes.

:eyes:

[dmkinsey]

6. I'm so skeptical

al-Zarqawi is small and portable. He's wherever the * administration need him to be.
(paraphrasing Riverbend)

[Hollowkatt]

8. I think he's the * administrations

version of Emanual Goldstien from 1984

[solinvictus]

25. Yep...

Along with OSB as well, both of them are semi-fictional phantoms invoked when those in power need to stir up some fear.

[pox_americana]

9. Or, Kaiser Sosee

eom

[Pastiche423]

17. Another vote for Kaiser Sosee

And just as feared.

[auburngrad82]

10. That was the subject of an LTTE I had published months ago

Putting a Face on Iraq

For over two years the Bush administration has attempted to put an evil face on the people of Iraq. The first face chosen was that of the Iraqi President, Sadam Hussein. Sadam, according to the Bush administration, was an evil man who was determined to use “weapons of mass destruction” against the United States.

When it was discovered that the suspected WMD didn’t actually exist, it became necessary for the administration to change tactics. While the face remained that of Hussein, the reason that we must stop him changed. We now had to liberate an oppressed population from the tyrannical control of a corrupt ruler. The evil reign of Sadam Hussein came to an end a year ago when a tired, weak, unshaven old man was pulled from his hiding place.

Still the war continued. The Bush administration was left with a dilemma. Now that Sadam was in custody support for the invasion was quickly turning against the administration.

Miraculously, a new face emerged. According to the Bush administration, Abu Musab Zarqawi, an Egyptian terrorist who had, incidentally, already been reported killed by US troops in Afghanistan, suddenly emerged to lead the Iraqi “insurgents” in battle. Not surprisingly, no one in Iraq has actually seen Zarqawi. The current attack on Fallujah had barely begun last week when the administration was already reporting that they believed Zarqawi had fled Fallujah for points unknown.

After two years of the Bush administration’s attempts to put an evil face on the invasion of Iraq, it is becoming clear that there is no single face. The face of Iraq is that of the men, women, and children who have been devastated by 12 years of economic sanctions and two years of an unjust and brutal war.

To the citizens of Iraq, the war does have an evil face. That face is that of George W. Bush. And the Iraqis see that face every time they look into the face of our soldiers.

Published in the Durham Herald Sun

[clem_c_rock]

11. I work in Durham. Thanks for the post

My sentiments exactly.

[PowerToThePeople]

16. Emmanuel Goldstein

Him and Bin Laden. We will never catch them, and * does not really want to. Perma-war and "with us or with the terrorists" thought-crime attitude.

[DistressedAmerican]

18. I Expect He Does. But, I Also Think The CIA Killed

Nick Berg to deflect from the prisoner abuse story. About that time, I wondered if he existed at all. Now, I think he is just another convenient boogeyman.

[clem_c_rock]

19. Again - funny thing about those beheadings

Whenever it was a caucasion, there was no sign of struggle when they were sawing the head off, and very little blood. Exactly what would happen when you would cut off the head of a dead guy.

Whenever it was someone w/ brown skin (arab looking) suddenly there was a massive amount of blood and signs of struggle.

Agree w/ you on the N Berg theory.

[DulceDecorum]

29. It would really quite pitiful

if it were to turn out that John Adam Cody the beheaded action figure had been preceded into infamy by a Julian Male blow-up Doll.

[JLW]

20. Bin Ladin and AlJazeera

Unless Bin Ladin and Aljazeera are in the administration's back pocket...The man exists and he is in Iraq.

"Usama bin Ladin has called for a boycott of next month's elections in Iraq and endorsed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as his deputy in the country, according to an audiotape broadcast by Aljazeera"
- Tuesday 28 December 2004, 2:50 Makka Time, 23:50 GMT
Aljazeera.net

Jamie

[newyawker99]

28. Hi JLW!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Kansas Wyatt]

21. It does not add up....

Supposedly he wants to take the credit and the blame for the be-headings, if you listen to our oh so truthful Government.

Why does he always conceal his identity by wearing a mask?

Is he afraid the camera is going to steal his soul? He's shy? He is hiding an ugly face? Bad hair day?

Perhaps our Government should invest in a Zarqawi mask and wooden leg to make their version of the story make sense. If someone wants credit for something like the Government says of Zarqawi, they are not going to conceal their identity by covering their face.

[Stop_the_War]

22. He does not exist...

[HR_Pufnstuf]

23. its just more propagannon.

they need a name and face to stick up. they cant use the iraqi people, it wouldnt make sense. so it doesnt. unless u "say" its an evil terrorist leading the way.

the latest "supposed" name change of MC Al-Z's group to "Al Queda in Iraq" finally convinced me.

it also known that MC Al-Z has been reported to have only one leg, and in another report, is already dead.

another clue is that the media never gives out these al queda websites where his letters are posted. why not???

everyone needs to press the media via email to release the website addresses, if they continue to say "posted on an islamic website" as a way to distribute propagannon.

jmho.

[apple_ridge]

24. Hand the Syrians were behind the

bombing in Beirut, so of course he exists.

CT? WTF is that?

[LisaL]

26. I personally don't think he is real.