Leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq is fictional

For a while now, a few bloggers have thought it awfully damned suspicious that most of the mainstream media suddenly started to refer to the insurgency in Iraq as "Al Qaeda." Just as suspicious was the appearance of a splinter group within Iraq calling itself "Al Qaeda," even though it appears to have questionable ties to the group run by Osama Bin Laden.

And what of Bin Laden himself? Quite a few people have raised questions about the authenticity of his videos and taped statements. We've also seen questions raised about Zarqawi and other jihadists.

Now we have this astonishing story from the International Herald Tribune:

For more than a year, the leader of one the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi named Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi.

As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, an organization publicly backed by Al Qaeda, Baghdadi issued a steady stream of incendiary pronouncements. Despite claims by Iraqi officials that he had been killed in May, Baghdadi appeared to have persevered unscathed.

On Wednesday, a senior American military spokesman provided a new explanation for Baghdadi's ability to escape attack: He never existed.

Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, the chief American military spokesman, said the elusive Baghdadi was actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor named Abu Adullah al-Naima.

The ruse, Bergner said, was devised by Abu Ayub al-Masri, the Egyptian-born leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who was trying to mask the dominant role that foreigners play in that insurgent organization.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and a Middle East expert, said that experts had long wondered whether Baghdadi actually existed. "There has been a question mark about this," he said.

Nonetheless, Riedel suggested that the disclosures made Wednesday might not be the final word on Baghdadi and the leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Even Mashadani's assertions, Riedel said, might be a cover story to protect a leader who does in fact exist.

"First, they say we have killed him," Riedel said, referring to the statements by some Iraqi government officials. "Then we heard him after his death and now they are saying he never existed. That suggests that our intelligence on Al Qaeda in Iraq is not what we want it to be."

I think there's more here than we've been told. Certainly more than one side can play this "fake tape" game? Would not an Iraqi and an Egyptian have distinguishable accents? Why did the Iraqis claim to have killed him? (Al Qaeda leaders tend to die several times.) Wasn't the sudden appearance of an Al Qaeda leader in Iraq awfully conveeeeeenient?