did we create al-Zarqawi?

Interesting discussion on NPR just now. Caller said al-Zarqawi was a two bit thug living in the Kurdish area of Iraq UNTIL Colin Powell suggested he was in with al qaeda and Saddam. That speech elevated al-Zarqawi to a position of power.

Before Powell's speach al-Zarqawi had never met Osama and was living in an area NOT controlled by Saddam (hence he can't be the Saddam/Osama connection). So Powell created him as connected to al qaeda (because he was a Sunni and a bad guy?) and because he lived in Iraq to Saddam to get us into this war.

I used to like Powell. I thought he was smart and independent and I'm a liberal so I tend to factor into my judgment of people their individual circumstances (translation: he's black). But after listening to David Corn on NPR just now say it has now been shown that not one thing Powell told the UN was true. Not one.

(There was some guy, the conservative for balance, I didn't get his name, tried to defend Coulter...saying her language is too harsh but it is true Dems put up victims to make a point. He got shouted down. Was sort of like the old days listening to NPR. I think it was the Diane Ream show (sp?). Diane was having none of it either.)

al zarqawi.

he may very well become a terrorist at some point -- but the war gave him the chance to become a mythic figure he would NEVER have had otherwise.

most likely he would been a very two-bit figure otherwise and died an ignominious death or rotted in jail.

but for bush -- none of this would have happened.

If we didn't give him a warzone to lead in.

but time and time again when US military leaders declare X is most wanted or has a reward on his head we confer upon them an unfounded legitimacy/infamous standing/position.

Simple syllogism:
If the Americans want him,
Then he must be important.

I heard some of it, but not the parts you mentioned

you can hear it on her site

check this out, btw. Al Franken and Joe Conason were discussing this today on AAR. they had THREE chances, at least, to kill him while he was in the Ansar al Islam camp in the Kurdish region of Iraq, protected by the nofly zone

wait while I find it

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1387710


Cuts thru the BS.

we would have invented him.

From The Seattle Times

Documents raise doubt about Iraq terrorist's importance

By Thomas E. Ricks
The Washington Post

"Although al-Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted deadly bomb attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," Col. Derek Harvey, who served as a military-intelligence officer in Iraq and then was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., last summer.

In a transcript of the meeting, Harvey said, "Our own focus on al-Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will — made him more important than he really is, in some ways.""

<snip>

"The military's propaganda program largely has been aimed at Iraqis but seems to have spilled over into the U.S. media. One briefing slide about U.S. "strategic communications" in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the "home audience" as one of six major targets of the American side of the war."

<snip>

"The al-Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several internal military documents. "Villainize al-Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. The methods listed included "Media operations" and "PSYOP.""


Additional sources:

http://today.reuters.com/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyI...

WaPo, which requires resistration. Use the topmost one from www.bugmenot.com :

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...