Washington Post: Ever the Objective Source...

Zarqawi Helped U.S. Argument That Al-Qaeda Network Was in Iraq

By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, June 10, 2006; Page A15

From the moment President Bush introduced him to the American people in October 2002, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi served a crucial purpose for the administration, providing a tangible focus for its insistence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist network responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

After the invasion that toppled Hussein, and the subsequent rise of the insurgency against occupying U.S. forces, Zarqawi's presence in Iraq was cited as proof that the uprising was fomented by al-Qaeda-backed "foreign fighters."

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld described Zarqawi as "the leading terrorist in Iraq and one of three senior al-Qaeda leaders worldwide."

In addition to his indisputably prominent role in the Iraqi insurgency, Zarqawi was always a useful source of propaganda for the administration. Magnification of his role and of the threat he posed grew to the point that some senior intelligence officers believed it was counterproductive.

But the administration also occasionally found it useful to play down Zarqawi's importance and influence. In early 2004, the then-governing Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad triumphantly displayed an intercepted letter from Zarqawi to the al-Qaeda leadership that it said illustrated the terrorist's despair in the face of an increasingly competent U.S.-trained Iraqi security force.

"The exact quote he uses is, and I quote Mr. Zarqawi, 'With the spread of the army and police, our future is becoming frightening,' " CPA spokesman Dan Senor told a Baghdad news conference.

Similar publicity was given to a letter intercepted last year in which al-Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, humbled Zarqawi with criticism of his public beheading of hostages and attacks on fellow Muslims.

At times, the conflicting messages seemed to overlap. In April, a top U.S. military official cited Zarqawi's failure to disrupt elections for a new Iraqi government as "a tactical admission" of defeat. Zarqawi and al-Qaeda, said Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, XVIII Airborne Corps commander, in a Washington address, "no longer view Iraq as fertile ground to establish a caliphate and as a place to conduct international terrorism."

That same month, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, U.S. military spokesman, told a Baghdad news briefing that more than 90 percent of the suicide attacks in Iraq were carried out by terrorist forces recruited and trained by Zarqawi.

Even as they were locked in genuine confrontation on the battlefield, Zarqawi and the United States engaged for years in public, tit-for-tat insults.

On April 25, Zarqawi brazenly showed his face for the first time in a video posted on the Internet. In a lengthy diatribe, he accused Bush of lying to Americans about U.S. military victories in Iraq. U.S. forces, he predicted, "will go out of Iraq humiliated, defeated." The video showed Zarqawi, bearded and dressed in black, strutting across a desert landscape, wielding an automatic weapon.

Ten days later, the United States counterattacked. In Baghdad, Lynch displayed what he said were outtakes from the Zarqawi video, captured during a raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in the city.

The essence of good reporting is to provide the reader with an objective source of information. It is to provide them with a basis upon which they can make informed decision about the policies of our government.

So let's see how DeYoung and Pincus have done.

We are told that Zarqawi "served" the administration's purpose to "provide...a focus" for their "insistence" that Saddam was linked to the al-Qaida terrorists who attacked us on 9-11.

There is so much fodder in this first paragraph. The implication, of course, is that the administration trumped up the presence and activities of Zarqawi and was using the existence of Zarqawi to foist an falsehood upon the American public, namely that Saddam was connected to the 9-11 terrorists.

Well, Zarqawi was a monsterous terrorist who required no promoting by the administration to emphasize his commitment to destroying the Iraqi government and terrorize its people. Zarqawi was a long standing member of al-Qaeda. The President never claimed that Iraq was in any way involved in the attacks on 9-11, that is a long-standing lie promulgated by those on the Left to attack the President.

Wow! All those lies by implication and in the first paragraph alone.

Next:

Zarqawi's presence was "cited as proof" that "al-Qaeda-backed "foreign fighters" "fomented" the "uprising."

Umm...Karen, Walter, "al-Qaeda-backed "foreign fighters" were, at least partially, instrumental in "fomenting" the "uprising." Funny, I recall very clearly that a majority of the initial attacks were attributed, by this administration, to surviving members of the Ruling Baath Party. It was only later that "foreign fighters" were mentioned, after they were detected.

Funny how many lies can be found in the first two paragraphs. Is there really any need to read further? Is there any need for me to cite anymore of the emotionally and politically charged adjectives and slanted phrasing peppered throughout this "objective" news article?

I always thought that opinion pieces belonged in the Editorial/Opinion section of the newspaper. Silly me. This isn't reporting, this is another in a long line of anti-Bush, anti-Iraq War hit pieces by a couple of (not so) crypto-Democrat political activists posing as reporters.

Full Story: Political Hack Writers of the WaPo

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