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06/18/2004:

"The "Long Established" Link..."

By Gary Leupp counterpunch.org full article

Painting al Zarqawi as the cheeky contender vying with Osama for 'biggest baddest terrorist guy' provides a handy pretext for some disastrous military operation in Iran, since Iran is accused of 'sponsoring' him. So far al Zarqawi is the dead man, the one-legged man, the one-legged man with two legs...I remember being convinced through most of the 90's that Osama was a fictional character-to tell the truth I may never be convinced. Bin Laden and now al Zarqawi are just so darned convenient...

some excerpts:

"A memo indicating that his [Cheney's] office was directly involved in the decision to award Halliburton (of which he was formerly CEO) no-bid contracts worth seven billion dollars in Iraq reconstruction work prior to the war last year; reports that most likely a member of Cheney’s office vindictively (and criminally) leaked to the press the identity of former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s CIA agent wife; charges that Cheney personally, repeatedly visited CIA headquarters to influence “intelligence” reporting in order to bolster the administration’s case for war with Iraq; and even his role as Bush “transition director” in placing neocons eager for a war with Iraq in key positions in the Defense Department and his own office…all these will likely embarrass him further in the coming months. But maybe, with the arrogance for the masses that typifies neocons, he will plod on disseminating disinformation, in his cool, measured, grandfatherly style, knowing that if challenged on the Iraq al-Qaeda link he will need only say, “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.”

If al-Zarqawi did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. The “Jordanian-born” militant (variously described as “Palestinian” or “Bedouin”) is the link posited by the Bush administration between Saddam Hussein, the secularist, and bin Laden, the Islamic fundamentalist. (In his crucial speech to the United Nations before the war, Colin Powell declared that there was a “sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network” and asserted that al-Zarqawi was the key figure in that nexus.) Any other links—such as the 1997 training of al-Qaeda operatives in airline hijacking, which supposedly took place at the Salman Pak training facility outside Baghdad---have been discredited. That leaves us with the al-Zarqawi link. The nice thing about the latter is that al-Zarqawi straddles the pre-invasion and post-invasion periods, and so can be used (by the neocons anyway) to justify not only the invasion but the ongoing occupation. Why’d we invade? Because, Cheney (who can no longer speak of weapons of mass destruction) explains, of those “long established ties with al-Qaeda.” Why are we still there? Because al-Zarqawi (either depicted as “linked to al-Qaeda” or as an al-Qaeda “operative”) is there in Iraq, and if his influence grows, Iraq will become Osama bin-Laden’s base for more attacks on the USA Homeland. His supposed presence, that is, justifies (so long as it may be posited) the presence of U.S. occupying forces. He—another personification of evil, a human face on Terror to add to that of the frustratingly elusive bin Laden---is indeed necessary.

As such, it is best that he remain as vaguely defined as possible. If, for example, you say he had his leg amputated in 2002 in the Baghdad hospital from which (you say) he made a phone call that you intercepted (that call being your key piece of evidence for the “long established” Saddam al-Qaeda ties), and then you, for example, say that the person beheading Nick Berg in Iraq two months ago, who seems to have both legs, is none other than arch-villain al-Zarqawi---then you run into logical problems. Some people (including German intelligence agents) think al-Zarqawi is as much a rival as ally to bin-Laden. The Christian Science Monitor suggests that the two men differ on how to exploit Shiite-Sunni differences in Iraq. (So best not to give to many details about this evil person, other than to make sure all know he is indeed evil, so sneakily so that if logical contradictions appear in media coverage of his activities, he, rather than they, are to blame.) But logical thinking aside, if one can depict al-Zarqawi as the mastermind of ongoing resistance to the occupation of Iraq, then you can divert attention from the general, indigenous, Iraqi rejection of the occupation, while depicting that occupation as an anti-al-Qaeda effort..."

more excerpts:
"Unfortunately for Bush and Cheney, as the president was spouting this nonsense the Sept. 11 Commission was telling Congress that there is “no credible evidence” for a Saddam link to the attacks, nor indeed any significant operational connection between Baghdad and al-Qaeda, ever. And also, yesterday, with perfect timing, 27 retired diplomats and military officers, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Ronald Reagan, weighed in with a statement accusing Bush of “a cynical campaign to persuade the public that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda and the attacks of Sept. 11.” Then came the results of a poll commissioned by the occupation authorities themselves, showing that 55% of Iraqis would feel safer if the occupation forces left immediately, and that 54% believe all Americans behave like the guards at Abu Ghraib. This makes it more difficult to argue that U.S. forces are liberators. But of course, we’ll have to remain in Iraq, however the people feel, if the protection of “our freedoms” requires tracking down arch-villain al-Zarqawi.

These are not good days for the Bushites, but their success to date in their deceit (most strikingly indicated by a poll taken just two months ago showing 57% of Americans still believe in the Iraq-Sept. 11 link) makes celebration of their fall premature. As Jacon Heilbrunn reports in the Los Angeles Times, “Despite charges that his homemade intelligence network at the Pentagon relied on bogus intelligence from Chalabi, [Douglas] Feith remains firmly in place at the Defense Department. David Wurmser, the architect of the pro-Chalabi strategy, is Cheney's Middle East advisor now. Mark Lagon, a neoconservative who worked for Jeane Kirkpatrick, has been promoted at the State Department. A host of younger neocons remains embedded in other agencies.

If Bush loses the election, a bloodbath will ensue; neoconservatives will be cannibalized by traditional conservatives and by their rivals at the State Department and elsewhere. But if Bush wins and the GOP retains its Senate majority, they will continue to rise. Neoconservative pit bull John Bolton, an undersecretary of State, might well head the CIA. Their main targets in a Bush second term: Syria and Iran.”

With some influential neocons insisting that al-Zarqawi is sponsored by Iran (and in their general campaign against the Muslim world finding no logical contradiction in his ties to al-Qaeda, Baathist Iraq, and the mullocracy in Tehran) we can be sure that the Jordanian, Osama II, remains in the news, reinvented from time to time as required.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the authorof Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu