Kerry on the Death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Getting Zarqawi four years too late

• June 8, 2006 | 11:26 AM ET | Permalink

It’s nice that they got Zarqawi. Too bad they didn’t try harder before the invasion, when they lied about his membership in Al-Qaeda to create their phony link between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Remember, in arguing for war, Bush referred to a "very senior al-Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year." But the administration has given no indication that Abu Musab Zarqawi collaborated with senior Iraqi officials. So did Powell. As Matthew Yglesias wrote in one of the first “Think Again” columns, back in November 2003, here.

This particular bit of dishonesty began its life in the more sophisticated hands of Colin Powell, where it was more a piece of misdirection than outright deception. In his well-received presentation to the UN Security Council laying out the case for war, Powell noted the existence of Ansar al-Islam and did state that it operated "in northern Kurdish areas outside Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq," but alleged that its head, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had once received medical treatment in Baghdad. Based on this slender thread of a link, Powell dedicated about 1,000 words to detailing the threat posed by Zarqawi and his group.
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Don Rumsfeld brought up Ansar's pre-war activities in Iraq on not one, not two, but three different Sunday shows, he noted back then he got not “even a whiff of contradiction or clarification passing through the lips of Snow, George Will, George Stephanopoulos, or Tim Russert."

Anyway, NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski broke the story back then “that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger. The reason? 'People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,' according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.”

So there you have it. Bush didn’t go after Zarqawi because he was useful in developing an argument for war—even though that argument was based on lies. Tens of thousands have died, trillions of dollars have been wasted and who knows how many terrorists have been created as a result of his all-but-criminal negligence.