2
2
1
Moving along. Remember al Zarqawi? He was the guy who almost single-handedly provoked 'civil war' in Iraq, or so we were told. Apart from the fact that he could barely shoot a gun, (here's a quick video clip)
http://www.sott.net/signs/player.swf">
there was also this from a few years ago:
How the U.S. Fuelled the Myth of Zarqawi The MastermindNone of which prevented the mainstream media from regaling us with this the other day:
Adrian Blomfield
The Telegraph, UK
03 Oct 2004
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist leader believed to be responsible for the abduction of Kenneth Bigley, is 'more myth than man,' according to American military intelligence agents in Iraq.
Several sources said the importance of Zarqawi, blamed for many of the most spectacular acts of violence in Iraq, has been exaggerated by flawed intelligence and the Bush administration's desire to find "a villain" for the post-invasion mayhem.
US military intelligence agents in Iraq have revealed a series of botched and often tawdry dealings with unreliable sources who, in the words of one source, "told us what we wanted to hear".
"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 linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq," the agent said.
"Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one.
British blunder may have let al-Qaida kingpin Zarqawi go freeIf I had a penny, (or a no-bid US govt. contract to rebuild a formerly flourishing Middle Eastern nation) for every time I've read about how close the US or British military came to catching [insert name of your favorite Islamic terrorist] only to have him somehow miraculously slip away, I'd be at least as rich as Tony Blair. But sadly, my chances of getting a no-bid US govt. contract are about as slim as Osama bin Laden after ten years living with kidney failure in a cave in Afghanistan, so I suppose I'll just have to grin and bear the ignominy of having my intelligence insulted with further fantastic tales of terrorist Houdinis. It's still kind of rude though. I mean, the official story of al Zarqawi's life was ridiculous enough, but the story of his death must surely have provoked a massive bout of cognitive dissonance in even the most eager believer in Western benevolent militarism.
British troops came close to capturing al-Qaida's top commander and the occupation forces' most wanted target in Iraq - but the operation collapsed after the only surveillance helicopter ordered to monitor him [followed him for 15 minutes and then] ran out of fuel and had to return to base, secret military intelligence logs suggest.
Here's a little recap for your edification:
The official file on Zarqawi, whose real name was Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayleh, tells us that he was born in Jordan. Barely literate, he became a petty criminal until the call to arms came with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After his time in the terror training camps of Afghanistan Zarqawi returned to his home with a radical Islamist agenda. The interesting part of his file, the part that is generally omitted from such reports, is that the training camps in Afghanistan before and during the soviet invasion of that country that Zarqawi attended, were funded and run by the CIA, making Zarqawi and others like him, assets of the US government.
Consider the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser, in an interview in the 15-21 January 1998 edition of Le Nouvel Observateur
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
