I doubt that I've ever before used the acronym WTF, but this story delivers good reason to take up the habit. In his most recent broadcast to the world, Osama Bin Laden proclaimed that Zarqawi's successor in Iraq is one Abu Ayyub al-Masri. The United States concurred, and offered both a bounty and a history:The military said al-Masri was born and brought up in Egypt. He then went to Afghanistan, where he trained in bomb-making before going to Iraq in 2002.However, an Egyptian newspaper reports that this fellow has been holed up in a prison in Egypt for the past seven years.
"Sharif Hazaa [al-Muhajir] is in Tura prison, and I met him two days ago while I was visiting some of my clients," Ismail, a lawyer known for defending Islamist groups, told the newspaper.Sharif Hazaa al-Muhajir is another name used by the same fellow. (Incidentally, "al-Masri" means "the Egyptian.")
Mistaken identity? Possibly. I'm tempted to bump that up to a "probably." As recently as three years ago, I would have scoffed at any other suggestion. But this administration has compiled such an impressive resume of deception, we can no longer dismiss outright the wilder theories.
One such theory would hold that Sharif Hazaa/Abu Ayyub al-Masri is nothing more than a scarecrow, erected to replace Zarqawi -- the original scarecrow, outed as such in the press and thus required to "die." To make the new bogeycreature into a credible threat, the scarecrow-stuffers created a fake Bin Laden tape. Digital sampling works wonders, eh wot?
Many Bin Laden tapes have been questioned -- see here and here. Conspiracy buffs aren't the only ones voicing doubts: Even Walter Cronkite has toyed with these suspicions.
Those suspicions come backed by expert opinion. In 2002, a respected Swiss research institute proclaimed a then-recent Osamacast to be phoney. See also this piece by Arabist Kevin Barrett, from last February:The trouble is, it's all based on a Big Lie. Take the recent "bin Laden" tape, please! That voice was no more bin Laden than it was Rodney Dangerfield channeling my late Aunt Corinne from Peoria. I recently helped translate a previously unknown bin Laden tape, a real one from the early '90s, back when he was still alive. I know the guy's flowery religious rhetoric. The recent tape wasn't him.Who knows? Maybe Bin Laden really did die in 2001, as many have claimed. Maybe al-Masri really has been in Tura prison. Maybe Zarqawi is living under an assumed name in Albuquerque. Maybe Al Qaida's central committee is a conclave of scarecrows.
The top American bin Laden expert agrees. Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University's religious studies department, has just published a book of translations of bin Laden's speeches. He says that the recent tape is a fake and that it is possible bin Laden is not even alive.
8 comments:
The question of fake Bin Laden tapes induces particular dyspepsia in light of the recent New Yorker story that CIA analysts concluded (at the time) that Bin Laden released the pre-2004 election tape to ensure GWB's reelection -- Bush's continued occupation, economic ruin and blundering in the Middle East being in Bin Laden's obvious interest -- and that the tape had a decided pro-Bush effect on the polls.
But Bush shares exactly the same interests as Bin Laden in this respect, so the tape could just as easily come from turdblossom.... Indeed, Republicans immediately began insisting that Bin Laden was voting for Kerry, and how much he sounded like s Democrat.
The larger point?
The Bushies are faking the tapes for their own benefit-ie, to continue the GWOT, and to enhance their terror fighting chops in order to get the foamers to the polls.
Joe,
There is an article in Asia Times about Bin Laden called "Inside the anti-US resistance", that claims Bin Laden is very ill and hooked up to a dailysis machine and can't even stand up. Besides, he has never really named any one to head anything before. The whole operation is based on very loosly connected cells operating almost in a vaccume, which is why it is hard to bring down.
Per beeta above, check out the British documentary "The Power of Nightmares".
In brief, the thesis is that Al Queda is largely a Western fiction of convenience, in the same way that 11 o'clock news convinces people that there's a thief, arsonist and rapist under every bed. Of course, no one would show the film here (I believed it aired on the BBC).
But it should be on DVD one of these days....
anonymous,
I'll try to find that documentry, I do believe that the "fear" card is used to achieve many ends not just here but everywhere. This does not effectively dis-prove the existance of groups whose aim is to inflict pain and create fear to achieve political gains. Al-Queda, is a group, but their goals may very well be quite different than it is portrayed and as has been noted in comments, could be much more in line with the Bush Admin. than against it. I also don't see how there is any difference in using fear by groups such as the Christian Fundementalist (Democrats are trying to ban the Bible) to achieve political ends. The use of violence is a matter for much broader discussion, but the use of fear is wide spread.
Damn. I know this is probably the last place my mind should be at the moment, because it's kinda trivial, and involves the kind of pseudo-scientific pop psycho analysis I usually hate to throw into discussions of this subject, (on this blog anyway) but: that photo? Is of the spookiest spook I have ever seen in my life.
I have not seen this scenario written anywhere yet, but the reports I read in newspapers and the internet suggest to me that the "al Zarqawi" who was recently "killed" by the pair of 500-pound bunker buster bombs dropped on his hideout may have actually been killed in a beating by the Americans who came to "collect" Zarqawi's body after the bombing. My speculative suspicion is that the "dead" psy-ops actor playing Zarqawi was supposed to be "discovered" after the bombing and pretend to be whisked by ambulance away from the scene of the bombing, expecting to live a "Witness Protection Program"-type existence elsewhere. However, there was an eyewitness report by an Iraqi who said someone who looked like Zarqawi was severely beaten or beaten to death by Americans at the scene after the bombing. On the basis of that eye-witness report, I suspect that the Zarqawi actor was double-crossed and actually killed to avoid any future problems for US military psy-ops with "al Zarqawi" re-appearing alive somewhere again.
anonymous,
I found the video, wasn't that hard, www.wanttoknow.info/powerofnightmares#view ....free viewing...haven't watched it yet... TNX
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