chernabog said:
Okay you got me. I've seen enough! I checked your first two links (just to amuse myself) and you're sources are pretty good.
The first bit of news came from ConjureBlog. That must be pretty reputable. Let's see, conjure. Doesn't that mean to imagine or influence as if by magic or to summon by magical powers?
Your other source, The Washington Post, clearly stated in the first couple of paragraphs that this information of Zarqawi's death, came from a leaflet signed by a dozen alleged insurgent groups and that it's authenticity could not be verified. Hmmm...yeah that's right, the insurgent groups wouldn't try to decieve us, or would they?
Sorry but I stopped reading after that and am now waiting for Ashton Kucher to come and tell me that I'm being punked.
This sounds like sour grapes with the government and in particular, President Bush!
Typical. Attack the source and ignore the message
Um, conjur is a blog but the entry linked to several NEWSPAPER ARTICLES. The source of the links matters not.
The first link contains:
Before January 2003, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was little known. Very few people were even aware of the one-legged ethnic Palestinian Ahmed Fadeel al-Khalayleh, born in the dreary industrial wasteland of Zarqa in Jordan, who was basically a semi-literate, tattooed, Shi'ite-hating thug.
His goal while in Jordan was to topple King Hussein. It didn't work. He became a jihadi in Afghanistan in the late 1980s against the Soviets, and after returning to Jordan in 1992 spent seven years in jail for possession of guns. In fighting in 2002 following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, one of his legs was severely injured - and may have been, or maybe not, amputated. He then found refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan, protected by the Anglo-American enforced no-fly zone, with Ansar al-Islam, a group with a maximum of 400 fundamentalist Kurdish warriors. And he may have moved to the Sunni triangle after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.
Zarqawi stopped being a non-entity on February 5, 2003, when he was spectacularly catapulted onto the global stage - six weeks before the start of the Iraq war - by US Secretary of State Colin Powell's weapons of mass destruction speech at the United Nations. Powell used Zarqawi to link Saddam Hussein's secular Ba'athist regime to the "Islamic terror network", and thus partly justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Asia Times Online confirmed in Amman, Jordan in February 2003 that practically nobody knew Zarqawi outside of Jordan - even though in 2002 he had been the target of a CIA disinformation campaign tying him to the theocratic regime in Tehran. But soon the Bush administration was to invest him with the aura of an "international man of mystery" - the world's most dangerous man after Osama bin Laden.
The second link (to the WaPo) contains:
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in the Sulaimaniyah mountains of northern Iraq "during the American bombing there," according to the eight-page leaflet circulated this week in Fallujah, a city 30 miles west of Baghdad that is a hotbed of anti-U.S. insurgency activity.
There was no way to verify the authenticity of the leaflet. It was signed by 12 groups, including several cited by U.S. officials in the past including the Ansar al-Sunna Army and Muhammad's Army.
It said al-Zarqawi was unable to escape the bombing because of his artificial leg.
Another link contains:
But some Iraqis say Washington exaggerates the threat from Zarqawi to disguise the strength of Iraq's homegrown insurgency, and Falluja residents say they have no idea where he is, despite warnings from the interim administration that they face tough action unless they give him up.
The official Kuwait news agency KUNA had quoted Iraqi security sources as saying a man suspected of being Zarqawi was detained during U.S.-led military operations in Falluja on Friday.
BBC reported:
In an interview with the Washington Post, a man claiming to be Zarqawi's lieutenant in the western city of Ramadi said his leader had been shot between his shoulder and chest during fighting at the weekend.
Abu Karrar said key members of Zarqawi's group were working with him to choose his successor from four candidates, three Arabs and an Iraqi.
The initial report that Zarqawi had been hurt, in a message signed by Al-Qaeda in Iraq and posted on a well-known Islamist site, failed to specify whether any injury was the result of combat.
The MSNBC article contains much the same info as the WaPo one.
So, we see Zarqawi is, at the least, one very lucky person to have survived being shot and losing a leg and yet still be leading the most violent group in Iraq. Oy vey.
But, go ahead and stick with your Fox News/Newsmax feed and forget the history of US government propaganda when it comes to war:
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2002/How-To-Start-A-WarMay02.htm