Abu Musab Al
Zarqawi has been presented both by the
Bush administration and the Western media as the
mastermind behind the "insurgency" in Iraq, allegedly
responsible for the massacres of Iraqi civilians.
Zarqawi
is the outside enemy of America. The Bush administration
in official statements, including presidential speeches, national
security documents, etc. has repeatedly pointed to the need to "go
after" Abu Musab Al Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden.
"You know, I hate to predict
violence, but I just understand the nature of the killers. This guy,
Zarqawi, an al Qaeda associate -- who was in Baghdad, by the way, prior
to the removal of Saddam Hussein -- is still at large in Iraq. And as
you might remember, part of his operational plan was to sow violence and
discord amongst the various groups in Iraq by cold- blooded killing. And
we need to help find Zarqawi so that the people of Iraq can have a more
bright -- bright future." (George W. Bush, Press Conference, 1 June
2004)
The official mandate of US and
British occupation forces is to fight and win the "war
on terrorism" on behalf of the Iraqi people. Zarqawi
constitutes Washington's justification for the continued
military occupation of Iraq, not to mention the brutal siege of
densely populated urban areas directed against "Al Qaeda in
Iraq" which is said to be led by Zarqawi.
Coalition forces are upheld as playing a "peace keeping
role" in consultation with the United Nations. The
Western media in chorus has consistently upheld the legitimacy of the
"war on terrorism". It has not only presented Zarqawi as a brutal
terrorist, it has also failed to report on the Pentagon's
disinformation campaign, which has been known and documented since
2002.
Pentagon PSYOP Zarqawi
Program
In an unusual twist, the Washington Post in a recent
article, has acknowledged that the role of Zarqawi had
been deliberately "magnified" by the Pentagon with a view to
galvanizing public support for the US-UK led "war on
terrorism":
"The Zarqawi
campaign is discussed in several of the internal military documents.
"Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," one U.S. military
briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: "Media operations,"
"Special Ops (626)" (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite U.S. military
unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in Hussein's
government) and "PSYOP," the U.S. military term for propaganda work..."
(WP. 10 April 2006)
The military's propaganda program,
according to the Washington Post, has "largely 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." (WP, op cit.)
An
internal document produced by U.S. military headquarters in
Iraq, states that "the Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful
information campaign to date." (WP, op
cit).
The senior
commander entrusted with Pentagon's PSYOP operation is
General Kimmitt who now occupies the position of senior planner
at US Central Command (USCENTCOM), responsible
for directing operations in Iraq and the Middle
East.
"In 2003 and 2004, he
coordinated public affairs, information operations and psychological
operations in Iraq -- though he said in an interview the internal
briefing must be mistaken because he did not actually run the
psychological operations and could not speak for them. Kimmitt said,
"There was clearly an information campaign to raise the public awareness
of who Zarqawi was, primarily for the Iraqi audience but also with the
international audience."
A goal of the campaign was to drive a
wedge into the insurgency by emphasizing Zarqawi's terrorist acts and
foreign origin, said officers familiar with the program. "Through
aggressive Strategic Communications, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi now
represents: Terrorism in Iraq/Foreign Fighters in Iraq/Suffering of
Iraqi People (Infrastructure Attacks)/Denial of Iraqi Aspirations," the
same briefing asserts...
...
It is difficult to
determine how much has been spent on the Zarqawi campaign, which began
two years ago and is believed to be ongoing. U.S. propaganda efforts in
Iraq in 2004 cost $24 million, but that included extensive building of
offices and residences for troops involved, as well as radio broadcasts
and distribution of thousands of leaflets with Zarqawi's face on them,
said the officer speaking on background...
The
Zarqawi program at the Pentagon was run concurrently with a related
operation "led by the Lincoln Group, a U.S. consulting firm, to
place pro-U.S. articles in Iraq newspapers, according to the officer
familiar with the program who spoke on background." According to The
Washington Post, however, there was no relationship between the
Pentagon's PSYOP program and that run by the Lincoln Group on
behalf of the Pentagon. (WP, 10 April
2006)
Disinformation and war propaganda are an integral part of military
planning. What the Washington Post fails to mention, however, is its
own role in sustaining the Zarqawi legend , along with network TV,
most of the printed press, and of course CNN and Fox News, not to
mention a significant portion of the alternative
media. Disinformation regarding the War on terrorism has been fed
into the news chain by a limited number of "top
feeders":
A relatively few well-connected correspondents provide the
"scoops" that get the coverage in the relatively few mainstream news
sources - the four TV networks, TIME, Newsweek, CNN - where the
parameters of debate are set and the "official reality" is consecrated
for the bottom feeders in the news chain. In other countries, this is
what is known as propaganda - or, put less politely, psychological
warfare. (The Propaganda Preparation for 9/11 by Chaim
Kupferberg,
Zarqawi has been
identified by the US media as being behind the "insurgency" in
Fallujah, Tal Afar and Samara. He was held responsible for the Amman hotel
bombings as well as terrorist attacks in several Western capitals.. He is
indelibly behind the suicide bomb attacks in Iraq as confirmed
by the Washington Post: " The ruling Shiite leadership has Zarqawi
squarely in its sights. He has led the suicide bombers whose Shiite
victims are now climbing into the thousands." ( 11 December
2005).
The Pentagon's PSYOP is a
cover-up for US sponsored atrocities by the US media, which
has upheld the "villainize Zarqawi" focus in its news and editorials
coverage of the Iraqi resistance movement.
The top U.S. military
intelligence officer in Iraq said Abu Musab Zarqawi and his foreign and
Iraqi associates have essentially commandeered the insurgency, becoming
the dominant opposition force and the greatest immediate threat to U.S.
objectives in the country.
"I think what you really have
here is an insurgency that's been hijacked by a terrorist campaign,"
Army Maj. Gen. Richard Zahner said in an interview. "In part, by Zarqawi
becoming the face of this thing, he has certainly gotten the funding,
the media and, frankly, has allowed other folks to work along in his
draft." (WP, 25 September 2005)
Amid the continuing bloodshed
in Iraq, there is evidence of fresh thinking. The change is, ironically,
brought about by Abu Musab Zarqawi himself, whose indiscriminate
terrorism appears to have succeeded in uniting people there against his
global jihad ideology. Since the hotel bombings in Zarqawi's native
Jordan, more and more Sunni Iraqis and Arabs have condemned the
terrorist leader's nightmarish vision for their societies -- one that
promises further "catastrophic" suicide attacks. (WP, 4 December
2005)
Immediate withdrawal from
Iraq is not an option the U.S. administration can or should entertain.
It would give Abu Musab Zarqawi and his small band of foreign fighters
the opportunity to claim victory and to announce that they have
successfully defeated a superpower. This would strengthen al Qaeda's
hand across the Middle East and elsewhere, and lead to greater
instability throughout the region. (WP, 11 December
2006)
The US media has identified the
nature of the insurgency, centering on the key role of Zarqawi and his
ties to the former Baathist regime:
"The backbone of the insurgency appears to be an
alliance between the die-hard Baathists and the network of terrorists
mostly under the command of Abu Musab Zarqawi. It is a partnership of
convenience; both groups are fighting the same battle, but for different
reasons and with different goals. (WP, 8 May 2005)
[S]enior officials at the
Pentagon and in Iraq say they believe that Mr. Zarqawi and the
insurgency's ''center of gravity'' is now in the bends and towns of the
Euphrates River valley near the Syrian border.(New York Times, 17
September 2005)
In Fallujah, the siege of the
city, which resulted in thousands of civilian deaths was described as a
battle against the "Zarqawi network":.
U.S. forces have conducted
four airstrikes on what have been described as targets associated with
Zarqawi's network in and around the city. Among them was a housing
compound in an agricultural area about 15 miles south of Fallujah where
the U.S. military said as many as 90 foreign fighters were meeting. The
military said the strike, which occurred on Thursday evening, killed
about 60 foreign fighters.
Witnesses and hospital
officials disputed the account, saying that about 30 men were killed,
many of them Iraqi. They said 15 children and 11 women also died in the
attack.
Neither version of the strike
could be independently verified.
The following night, the U.S.
military said in a statement that it conducted "another successful
precision strike" on a meeting of "approximately 10 Zarqawi terrorists"
in central Fallujah. "There was no indication that any innocent
civilians were in the immediate vicinity of the meeting location," the
military said in the statement. (WP, 21 Sept 2004)
Concluding
Remarks
If indeed Zarqawi's role was
fabricated as part of the Pentagon's PSYOP, what is the accuracy of these
media reports?
The internal military documents
leaked to Washington Post confirm that the Pentagon is involved in an
ongoing propaganda campaign which seeks to provide a face to the
enemy. The purpose is to portray the enemy as a terrorist, to
mislead public opinion.
Counterterrorism and war
propaganda are intertwined. The propaganda apparatus feeds disinformation
into the news chain. The objective is to present the terror groups as
"enemies of America." responsible for countless atrocities in Iraq and
around the World. The underlying objective is to galvanize public
opinion in support of America's Middle East war agenda.
US military-intelligence has
created it own terrorist organizations. In turn, it has developed a
cohesive multibillion dollar counterterrorism program "to go after" these
terrorist organizations. To reach its foreign policy objectives, the
images of terrorism in the Iraqi war theater must remain vivid in the
minds of the citizens, who are constantly reminded of the terrorist
threat. The Iraqi resistance movement is described as terrorists led by
Zarqawi.
The propaganda campaign using
the Western media, presents the portraits of the leaders behind the
terror network. In other words, at the level of what constitutes an
"advertising" campaign, "it gives a face to
terror."
The "war on terrorism"
rests on the creation of one or more evil bogeymen, the terror leaders,
Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, et al, whose names and photos are
presented ad nauseam in daily news reports. Without Zarqawi and bin Laden, the "war on
terrorism" would loose its raison d'ĂȘtre. The main casus belli is to
wage a " war on terrorism".
The Pentagon documents leaked
to the Washington Post regarding Zarqawi have revealed that Al Qaeda in
Iraq is fabricated.
The suicide attacks in Iraq are indeed real,
but who is behind them? There is mounting evidence that many of the
suicide attacks have been organized by the US-UK military and
intelligence. (See references below pertaining to the British
Special Forces Soldiers, caught planting bombs in Basra.)
Related
articles
British Chief Police Investigator in Basra dies under
mysterious circumstances - by Michel
Chossudovsky - 2005-10-17
Were British Special Forces Soldiers Planting Bombs in
Basra? - by Michael Keefer -
2005-09-25
British "Undercover Soldiers" Caught driving Booby
Trapped Car - by Michel Chossudovsky
- 2005-09-20
Did Al-Zarqawi Really Bomb Amman? - by Dr. Elias Akleh - 2005-11-15
The Al-Zarqawi 11/9 Amman Bombings: More Holes in the
Official Story - by Michel
Chossudovsky - 2005-11-15
Fabricating an Enemy: "Al Qaeda in Iraq". Who is Abu
Musab Al-Zarqawi?: - by Michel
Chossudovsky - 2005-09-30
Al Qaeda and the Iraqi Resistance
Movement - by Michel Chossudovsky -
2005-09-18