Iraq, al Qaeda, and Progress

On June 8, 2006 the U.S. bombed al Zarqawi's safe house. He reportedly lived an additional 52 minutes before succumbing to his injuries. The Bush administration celebrated on one hand and told us that this was not significant on the other hand. By June 12th, al Qaeda had supposedly named a new leader in Iraq - Abu Hamza al-Muhajir - an Egyptian. The news was reported on the alleged "jihadi Web site Al Hesba ".

While al-Muhajir was reportedly an unknown:

"Muhajir is something of a mystery; his name does not appear on any of the charts of wanted leaders of Al Qaeda previously issued by the American command, or on any of the dozens of previous statements by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia posted on the Internet. Senior Iraqi officials said they were unfamiliar with anyone by that name." (Reuters)

He was not that "undiscovered" as by June 17th there was (apparently) a full dossier on him. Meet the new face of terror appeared in the Australian Herald Sun.

The new leader is Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Afghanistan-trained explosives expert with links to Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Maj-Gen William Caldwell said. He is believed to be taking over after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Maj-Gen Caldwell said Masri was the man identified in an internet posting by al-Qaida as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, Zarqawi's successor. Muhajir was a nom de guerre or code name. The name Muhajir means "immigrant" in Arabic and suggested he was not an Iraqi. According to the US military, Masri, an Egyptian, was a founding member of al-Qaida in Iraq.

While he was reportedly an unknown, the Bush administration reported they had put a bounty on Mujair before Zarqawi's demise:

Even before Zarqawi's death, the Bush administration put a $270,000 bounty on Masri because of his status within al-Qaida, Maj-Gen Caldwell said.

Citing recently declassified documents, he said Masri had been a terrorist since 1982, "beginning with his involvement in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad", led by Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden's top deputy. By that chronology, the photograph the military presented -- of a young man with a sparse moustache and trimmed goatee -- appeared at least several years old. "

This seems to conflict with Abu Hamza al-Muhajir "unknown" status. Wouldn't a quarter million dollar reward draw somebody's attention? Perhaps this is just another case of rewriting history. A task that the Bush administration both excels at and seems to enjoy.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nour al-Maliki, Who Bush has a "positive gut feeling" on, responded to a- Zarqawi's death by "deploy[ing] 75,000 Iraqi and multinational forces in Baghdad." Those "multinational forces" are actually U.S. troops. Troops who are fair game under Maliki's amnesty plan.

If this is what "winning" looks like, then we certainly have a lot to mourn over as the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq goes over 2500, and the number of Iraqi civilian dead continues to rise though is not counted.

Posted by rowan at June 18, 2006 8:17 AM | [eMail this article!] |