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Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: Dead Again

By Kurt Nimmo
Kurtnimmo.com | Last updated: Jun 8, 2006 - 5:46:00 PM

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Let’s see. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the phantom terrorist with super-human powers, was killed in the Sulaimaniyah mountains of northern Iraq, and then he was killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, followed by a death during Operation Matador near the town of Qaim on the Syrian border, and finally he was killed, along with his mentor, Osama bin Laden, in the besieged city of Fallujah. Now we are told he was “killed in a U.S. air raid north of Baghdad [in the town of Hibhib near Baquba],” according to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Reuters reports.

The reported death—and past deaths—are simply another dimension of a rather transparent psychological operations campaign run out of the Pentagon. In April, we learned that al-Zarqawi is little more than hype, a neocon propaganda program. “The US military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program,” reported the Sydney Morning Herald. “The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush Administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks,” or rather supposedly responsible, as no credible evidence has surfaced to date to pin blame on “al-Qaeda” (in fact, it is difficult to prove “al-Qaeda” itself actually exists). “The military’s propaganda program has largely been aimed at Iraqis, but seems to have spilled over into the US media. One “selective leak” about Zarqawi was made to Dexter Filkins, a New York Times reporter based in Baghdad. Filkins’s resulting article, about a letter supposedly written by Zarqawi and boasting of suicide attacks in Iraq, ran on the Times front page in February, 2004.”

I’d have to say this is backwards. In fact, the “propaganda program” was aimed primarily at Americans, who need a scary Freddy Kruger Muslim to convince them the occupation of Iraq is necessary. More scary demons will be required soon for a shock and awe attack unleashed against Iran.

Of course, it is only natural to kill off al-Zarqawi once again. Earlier this year, the Pentagon released a video, allegedly discovered “by US forces in a hideout in the Al-Yusufiyah neighborhood of southern Baghdad,” showing al-Zarqawi (or a person we are told is al-Zarqawi), wearing New Balance tennis shoes and fumbling with a U.S. M-249 squad automatic weapon. It appears the purpose of this video is to make al-Zarqawi out to be a bumbling idiot. “Is the recently released video, which consists in ridiculing rather than villainizing ‘Enemy Number One’, part of the Zarqawi PSYOP program?” muses Michel Chossudovsky.

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© Copyright Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire, 2006