or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
June 09, 2006
Nir Rosen, World's Bravest Person, on Zarqawi
Here's Nir Rosen on Zarqawi. Rosen is almost unique among Western journalists in having direct contact with the Iraqi insurgency:
So time to dispel some myths. Zarqawi did not really belong to al Qaeda. He would have been more shocked than anybody when Colin Powel spoke before the United Nations in the propaganda build up to the war and mentioned Zarqawi publicly for the first time, accusing him of being the link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein...He had nothing to do with al Qaeda until December 2004, when he renamed his organization Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, or Al Qaeda in Iraq as it has become known.Why did he do this? It was a great deal for him and Bin Ladin. Zarqawi needed the prestige associated with the Al Qaeda brand name in global jihadi circles....For Bin Ladin and his deputy Zawahiri it was also a great deal. Al Qaeda was defunct. Its leadership hiding in the Pakistani wilderness, completely cut off from the main front in today's jihad, Iraq. When Zarqawi assumed the al Qaeda brand name he gave a needed fillip to Bin Ladin who could now associate himself with the Iraqi jihad, where the enemy was being successfully killed every day, and where the eyes of the Arab and Muslim world were turned to, far more than Afghanistan.
Zarqawi was not very important in the first place, and hardly represented the majority of the resistance or insurgency...It took the United States to make Zarqawi who he became. Intent on denying that there was a popular Iraqi resistance to the American project in Iraq, the Americans blamed every attack on Zarqawi and his foreign fighters, and for a while it seemed every car accident in Baghdad was Zarqawi's fault. The truth was that much of Iraq's Sunni population, alienated by the Americans who removed them from power and targeted them en masse during raids, supported and participated in the anti American resistance. Even many Shias claimed resistance. Muqtada Sadr, the most powerful and popular single individual leader in Iraq, led two "intifadas" against the Americans in the spring and summer of 2004, and his men still rest on their laurels, claiming they too took part in the Mukawama, or resistance. But by blaming Zarqawi for everything the Americans created the myth of Zarqawi and aspiring Jihadis throughout the Arab world ate it up and flocked to join his ranks or at least send money. Zarqawi was the one defying the Americans, something their own weak leaders in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and elsewhere, could not do, having sold out long ago. It was then comical when the Americans released the Zarqawi video out-takes and mocked him for fumbling with a machine gun. Having inflated his reputation they were now trying to deflate it. But it was too late.
Read it all. Also, be sure to check out Rosen's website and his new book, In the Belly of the Green Bird.
Posted at June 9, 2006 03:58 PM | TrackBackThere is none so blind as him who WILL NOT see. That's why George works so hard at crushing dissent.
Posted by: Mike Meyer at June 10, 2006 09:25 AMI think this take is far closer to the truth than anything in the media, obviously. Still, I don't think it's quite there.
Zarqawi - like bin Laden and Zawahiri - is an FBI or CIA asset. He was a former used car salesman, trumped up into a disposable boogieman. A focal point for the insurgency, who's body could be trotted out when Bush needed misdirection from some inevitable disaster, such as the fallout over Haditha. The globalsts are managing this war (and all wars), and Zarqawi was just a player, as is Bush, as is Rumsfeld, as is the Dem leadership. Next puppet in charge? Hillary. Get ready for a kinder, gentler, never ending, phony war on a global terror network that doesn't exist.
But all of this Iraq War is theater - the globalists in charge of (everything) never had any pan for Iraq aside from what is happening. Total civil war - expending ordnance that must be purchased, expending men that cannot, inching towards the intended Arab holocaust and the NWO.
The lifeblood of these people is conflict - both actual warfare (which lines defense industry pockets) and ideological warfare (which perpetuates the 2-party system puppet show necessary to continue the global ruse). Each side is always given it's tidbits of evidence and hope, and the complicit media whores simply dole each out as instructed by the perps read: bankers - the benefactors of all wars).
And each side gets it moments of power. Next up, the Left... as it was designed. Congressional power restored in '06, Executive in '08. And no one will be the wiser. Just another lucky break, this time for Hillary and her newest, bestest buddy, Rupert. Whooda thunkit?
Posted by: Rumpl4skn at June 10, 2006 05:02 PMThere is a silver lining in all of this. A new star is glimmering at the Washington Post who is taking aim at Peter Baker's delicious series on the female Rambo, Jessica Lynch. I'm talking, of course, about the one and only Craig Whitlock, whose analysis of the Zarqawi story is like a breath of fresh air -- scratch that, like a line of cocaine in some midnight bathroom in a not very salubrious club. From the lede onward, LALA land is here, and it is proud!
"BERLIN, June 9 -- The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi could mark a turning point for al-Qaeda and the global jihadist movement, according to terrorism analysts and intelligence officials."
On my blog I collected some more of Whitlock's over the top grafs -- but go to the WAPO site. It is really is something special for every fan of Bovard et Pécuchet, for every reader of the fourth book of Gulliver's Travels. Just when I am starting to Jones about the shakey marriage between the D.C. press and the White House -- it is all getting so he said, she said -- Whitlock comes in and just makes magic. Reminiscent of turning points of yore, with Rummy so funny, the cracks about the guy stealing the vase, the plans in place to only dice up the contracts and oilfields to American companies cause we DESERVED THEM, thank you very much, the adoring Sally Quinn profiles of Chalabi.
Sometimes I get so nostalgic. DJ, play Clint Black's Iraq & Roll for me one more time, while I nurse my Lone Star!
Posted by: Roger at June 10, 2006 07:38 PMThe only problem is, the real Zarqawi died in the Kurdish region before the war in Iraq even began.
Posted by: ned at June 11, 2006 02:39 PM
