RS National Affairs Daily

6/10/06, 1:35 pm EST

NYT: “Lingering Questions” About Zarqawi’s Death

Dexter Filikins and John Burns report:

Given the extraordinary destruction evident at the house, a number of questions lingered, including how anyone could have survived such an attack, even for a few minutes, as American and Iraqi officials say Mr. Zarqawi did. It seemed puzzling, too, surveying the destruction, how Mr. Zarqawi’s head and upper body, shown on television screens across the world, could have remained largely intact.

-- TD

More Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Comments (0) Link to this Email

6/10/06, 1:18 pm EST

WaPo: Zarqawi “Always a Useful Source of Propaganda”

Thankfully, the Post’s amnesia about their own page-one expose of the Pentagon’s phys-op to “villainize” Zarqawi appears to have been short lived:

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.

Developing….

-- TD

More General, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Comments (0) Link to this Email

6/9/06, 3:09 pm EST

Zarqawi: The Unanswered Questions

I’m as psyched as anyone that the dreaded Z man is dead. I’ve been blasting the Bush administration for years for not taking out Zarqawi prior to the Iraq war.

But that said, there’s a lot about this terrorist’s tale that just doesn’t add up.

Today, we find out that Zarqawi wasn’t killed instantly by the two 500-pound bunker-busting bombs dropped on his safe house — as Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell told Americans yesterday — but rather he survived long enough to be found by Iraqi police and strapped to a stretcher, before finally expiring in U.S. custody, mumbling unintelligibly with his final breaths.

Clearly, Zarqawi escaped the brunt of the bomb attack. Bombs that atomize a house like this, don’t leave bodies intact like this . But why did the Pentagon mislead Americans? The military seems to have come clean only after the Washington Post and CNN started poking in to the incident.

And what are we to make of the official story that Iraqi police were the first to arrive on the scene and strapped Zarqawi to a stretcher. You mean to tell me that American Special Forces weren’t pre-positioned to sweep in immediately after those bunker busters went off? Call me a tin-foil hat, but there’s something oddly Jessica Lynch about this capture of the top terrorist in Iraq.

Is any of this important? It’s impossible to say just yet. But even in regards to Zarqawi’s death, the Pentagon doesn’t seem to be shooting straight with the American people about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Here, then, are the open questions I have for Rumsfeld & Co about Al Qaeda’s main man in Mesopotamia:

  • Is it true that the military chose not to take out Zarqawi during the buildup to the Iraq war — as has been reported by MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and others — primarily because of his PR value in suggesting a link between Saddam and terrorist groups? The decision certainly helped make the case for war, as it allowed Colin Powell to declare in his speech to the UN: “Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.”
  • According to several administration figures, Zarqawi had traveled to Baghdad in 2002 to receive medical treatment of a badly wounded leg. Many reports even had Zarqawi receiving an amputation. What signs did the terrorist’s corpse show of this injury?
  • According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon was deeply involved in a propaganda campaign to “villainize” Zarqawi, to make him the public face of terror in Iraq. The success of the “psychological operations” campaign was summarized in a military memo obtained by the Post:

    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 Aspirations (Disrupting Transfer of Sovereignty)

  • The Post expose suggests that this campaign was almost too effective, distorting the fact that Zarqawi’s violence, in the words of one military commander, Col. Derek Harvey, was a “very small part of the actual numbers.” Col. Harvey continued: “Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will — made him more important than he really is.”

    In celebrating Zarqawi’s death yesterday President Bush declared that “the ideology of terror has lost one of its most visible and aggressive leaders.” To what extent was the Pentagon complicit in raising Zarqawi’s visibility?

  • In response to the Post story questioning the Pentagon’s decision to “magnify” Zarqawi’s role in Iraq, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch declared, as the Post relayed it, that “more than ninety percent of the suicide attacks in Iraq are carried out by fighters recruited, trained and equipped by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.” If this is true, why is the Pentagon now warning that we should not expect a dramatic dropoff in this sort of violence from the insurgency.
  • Also in the aftermath of the Post report, the Pentagon released outtakes of a video showing Zarqawi fumbling with an automatic rifle. Maj. Gen. Lynch mocked Zarqawi’s inability to handle a weapon and questioned his capacities as a leader. Why should we not interpret this as an attempt to “demagnify” Zarqawi’s importance?

    • Again, I’m not among those who questions the unalloyed good that this evil mass murderer is now dead. But there is more, or perhaps, rather, less to the life story of this miserable cur than we’re hearing from our government.

    -- TD

    More General, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

    Comments (6) Link to this Email

    6/8/06, 9:17 pm EST

    The Paris Hilton Tax Lives!

    The House Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act of 2005 has just been stalled in the Senate, 57-41, falling three votes short of the 60 needed to bring the measure up for an offical vote.

    -- TD

    More General

    Comments (0) Link to this Email

    6/8/06, 4:00 pm EST

    Ann Coulter: Insult Comic

    Ann Coulter has taken her incredibly dark, reactionary comedy to new heights with this 9/11 widows bashing routine. She’s abandoned all pretense of genuine outrage and leapt into the realm of self parody. She’s Stephen Colbert without the knowing wink.

    Andrew Sullivan nails Coulter’s schtick perfectly:

    She’s not a social or political commentator. She’s a drag queen impersonating a fascist. I don’t even begin to believe she actually believes this stuff. It’s post-modern performance-art.

    -- TD

    More General

    Comments (8) Link to this Email

    6/8/06, 12:09 pm EST

    Ding Dong, Zarqawi’s Dead

    Good news from Iraq.

    -- TD

    More General, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

    Comments (8) Link to this Email

    6/7/06, 11:58 am EST

    Open Thread: Gay Marriage Ban Fails

    The Senate deadlocked on Bush’s anti-gay marriage ammendment 49-48. That’s only 1 vote better than in 2004, when the measure was similarly tabled by a 48-50 vote. This, despite adding 4 Senate seats in the 2004 election.

    [Photograph by Noah Kalina]

    -- TD

    More General

    Comments (32) Link to this Email

    6/7/06, 11:55 am EST

    Thou Shall Not Win

    Christianist “10 Commandments” Judge Roy Moore has lost his primary campaign to represent the Republican Party in the race for Alabama governor.

    -- TD

    More General

    Comment (1) Link to this Email

    6/7/06, 11:35 am EST

    Open Thread: “Sex & Scandal at Duke”

    In the June 15, 2006 issue of ROLLING STONE, Janet Reitman writes about the Duke case and sexual politics on campus. Take a look and share your thoughts below.

    -- Rolling Stone Editors

    More General

    Comments (30) Link to this Email

    6/6/06, 3:29 pm EST

    The Voice of Voting Reform

    2004 Election Interview: The Rev. DeForest Soaries

    Republican DeForest Soaries served as the first chair of the federal Election Assistance Commission, set up in the wake of the Florida fiasco of 2000 to oversee ongoing reform of American voting. The agency was constantly underfunded: “We really had to put together a federal agency with spit,” Soaries says, “when that agency was supposed to bring about reforms in voting for federal elections.”

    The EAC was supposed to ensure that the billions in federal funds spent on new voting technology was spent wisely: “There are legitimate questions in circulation about the integrity of electronic voting,” he says, “and the reality is that no one really knows the answers. Because we don’t have enough research, and the research budget that was authorized by the Congress for the EAC to get to the bottom of these issues was completely zeroed out in the appropriations. The EAC itself was only authorized through last year. So what serious person would accept an appointment to a federal agency that’s no longer authorized?”

    Soaries resigned a year ago in disgust, calling the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress uncommitted to improving America’s sorry election apparatus. This May, National Affairs Daily talked with Soaries, who is speaking out after a year of self-imposed silence.

    ROLLING STONE: What led you to resign?

    DeForest Soaries: It wasn’t until I worked in Washington on an issue as generic as this that I realized how pitiful and perhaps how hopeless Washington really is. For God’s sake…if any issue should be the catalyst for bipartisan cooperation, this is the issue: voting.

    It was probably the worst experience of my life. I found that there is very little interest in Washington for true election reform. That neither the White House nor either house of the Congress seems to be as committed to guaranteeing democratic participation in this country as we seem to be in other countries. It’s an embarrassment that we don’t have a broad enough consensus among political leaders that true reform should take place. I could count the members of Congress on one hand that took these issues seriously.

    RS: What explains that?
    DS: My sense was that most of the elected officials in Washington — in their heart of hearts — really believe that the system can’t be too bad because it produced them. And when people in power can stay in power they do very little to tinker with the apparatus that put them in power. We’ve seen it time after time after time. We know that the Daly machine produced certain results predictably. We know that there are certain Republican districts that could elect a Republican cow if they ran ‘em. It’s not about Democrat or Republican, black or white. It’s about power.

    RS: Were there any attempts to politicize the work of the EAC?

    DS: The one time I got a call from the White House trying to invade this space, I pushed back, and they never called again. There were people in the White House who thought that because I was a Republican that I cared more than I did about Republican politics. Alright? It only happened once. Early in my term.

    RS: What’s the biggest problem with American elections?

    DS: Voting in this country has essentially been relegated to a very fledging group of election officials, who receive no training and operate on shoestring budgets on one hand, and political consultants whose job is to get their candidates elected on the other. And when you have that kind of scenario, it’s really hard to describe yourself as a vibrant democracy. It’s an embarrassment.

    RS: Were you troubled by the 2004 presidential election?

    DS: Here’s what I found troubling. Look at Ohio. Is a two-hour line appropriate or inappropriate? We don’t have an answer to that question. What we say is that democracy means that you have the right to vote without intimidation and undue burdens. But if you stand in line for six hours, technically, today there is no document, no standard, no law that says that that’s wrong. And the problem is this is six years after Florida 2000! What number of votes is an acceptable number to lose in any race? We don’t have a performance rate for machines. If we discovered that of 10,000 Diebold machines model XYZ, 1,000 break down during the day, is that acceptable or unacceptable? If it were a toaster we could tell you, it were a tire we could tell you. If a certain tire malfunctions a certain number of times then they have a recall.

    We have no basis for having a recall of any particular type of voting equipment because there are no standards. And when we do have standards, even these standards are required to be voluntary. So is a one percent error rate good? Is a two percent error rate good? 5,000 votes cast, only 4,000 counted? Is that success or failure?

    So when you ask me about Ohio, you can recite to me the worst data that anyone has unearthed in Ohio, I would have to say to you — very technically — so what? What does it violate?

    It may violate your sensibilities, it may violate my sensitivities, it may violate someone else’s sense of fair play. But the Secretary of State of Ohio has proven that you can get straight through an election by saying: We broke no law. You see the problem?

    [Photograph by John Maynard]

    -- TD

    More General

    Comment (1) Link to this Email