ZARQAWI REFRESHER

I didn't recall Z being much of name until we got close to invading Iraq and according to Patrick Cockburn there's a reason for that:

Zarqawi owed his rise to the US in two ways. His name was unknown until he was denounced on 5 February 2003 by Colin Powell, who was the US Secretary of State,before the UN Security Council as the link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida.

There turned out to be no evidence for this connection and Zarqawi did not at this time belong to al-Qa'ida.

One internalbriefing document quoted by The Washington Post records Brigadier General Kimmitt, the chief US military spokesman at the time, as saying: "The Zarqawi psy-op programme is the most successful information campaign to date."

It was geared to proving that the invasion of Iraq was a reasonable response to the 9/11 attacks. This meant it was necessary to show al-Qa'ida was strong in Iraq and play down the fact that this had only happened after the invasion.

More on the Zarqawi psy-ops from E & P. This is from the WaPo:

Although Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted deadly bombing attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," Col. Derek Harvey, who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq and then was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., last summer.

In a transcript of the meeting, Harvey said, "Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will -- made him more important than he really is, in some ways."

"The long-term threat is not Zarqawi or religious extremists, but these former regime types and their friends," said Harvey, who did not return phone calls seeking comment on his remarks.


Knight-Ridder has more on the Zarqawi hype:

The death of terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, while a major tactical success, is unlikely to have a significant impact on the struggle against al-Qaida and its far-flung terrorist network of spin-offs and imitators, current and former U.S. counterterrorism officials said Thursday.

President Bush termed Zarqawi's death in a strike coordinated by U.S., Iraqi and Jordanian security forces "a severe blow to al-Qaida."


But a half-dozen officials, who have decades of experience tracking and analyzing Islamic militants, offered a more cautious view.

"To me it's not a severe blow. It's a dent," said Dennis Pluchinsky, a former State Department terrorism analyst. "It will probably have a minimal impact on the insurgency in Iraq and minimal impact on the global jihad movement, which is now self-sustaining."

"It's a fair statement to say that Zarqawi's role has been overplayed somewhat," said retired senior CIA official Paul Pillar, former deputy director of the agency's counterterrorist center.

There were two reasons, Pillar said. The Jordanian provided evidence, however flimsy, of an al-Qaida presence in Iraq. And his public denunciations of democracy made him a "poster child" for the White House argument that the war in Iraq was being fought against the enemies of democracy in the Arab world.