Always blame Zarkawri...purportedly killed this past March. This is a good article from March 2003. Excerpt:
That Amazingly Useful "Zarqawi Letter"
According to the New York Times (which has a long distinguished history breaking these kinds of stories), on January 23 U.S. forces raided an "al-Qaeda safe house" in Baghdad, netting a CD-Rom with a letter addressed to the inner circle of al-Qaeda. The author is not indicated, but reportedly someone captured in the house said it was written by Zarqawi to al-Qaeda. Note that this new story wasn't announced in a press conference by Paul Bremer or military officials but by the NYT; nevertheless, it was immediately considered valid by the mainstream press and used by the latter to affirm al-Qaeda-linked Zarqawi's nefarious role in Iraq.
(It kind of reminds me of the hand-written memo attributed to the Iraqi intelligence boss Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Takriti, revealed by the Richard Perle-linked Telegraph last December, which linked Saddam to Mohammed Atta, Libya, Syria and a "Niger shipment" and touted by the neocon-friendly press as truly validating the war. Too good to be true, it's been pretty much exposed as another piece of disinformation.But I think there will be more bogus letters, most likely linking Syria to something or other offering a pretext for regime change there.)
The text, translated from Arabic by the Coalition Provisional Authority, immediately appeared in abbreviated form on the National Review and Project for a New American Century and other such websites, just as you'd expect. They leave out much of the preamble, which comprises half the text of the 17-page missive, which recounts Iraq's religious and ethnic history in detail that you'd think wouldn't be at all necessary in a communication between a longtime al-Qaeda intimate and bin Laden's inner circle. The writer denounces Shiites as snakes and vermin, does not recognize them as Muslims, and accuses them of working with the infidels. It notes that (1) the Americans have been "befriended" by the majority Shiites, (2) the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty by June 1 will effectively end Iraqi resistance, and so (3) the al-Qaeda-linked resistance forces should do their best to provoke a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis so that the Coalition forces will have to remain and thus remain targets of the jihad.
Greg Weiher raised reasonable doubts about the authenticity of this letter. More tardily, Newsweek's Rod Nordland has raised questions: "The letter so neatly and comprehensively lays out a blueprint for fomenting strife with the Shia, and later the Kurds, that it's a little hard to believe in it unreservedly. It came originally from Kurdish sources who have a long history of disinformation and dissimulation." (Kurdish sources who may have a vested interest in fomenting inter-Arab Iraqi conflict to abet the cause of Kurdish independence.) I won't repeat Weiher and Nordland's points. I'll just observe that if things go very badly for the U.S. in Iraq (as I think they will), and if civil war erupts (as I think it may), then the PNAC guys and whatever administration's in power will need to say: "This mess isn't our responsibility, not our fault. It's Zarqawi, linked to al-Qaeda, linked to Ansar al-Islam, linked to Iran, linked to Syria, and linked to Saddam. All those evil people who started this by attacking us on 9-11. All those now trying to thwart our efforts to achieve main reason now justifying our war: to bestow democracy and our universally applicable values on Iraq."
Democracy in this case means, of course, democracy in any shape and form chosen by the sovereign Iraqi people---just so long as it allows U.S. control over the flow of Iraqi oil, guarantees massive profits to U.S. corporations receiving contracts for reconstruction, permits the establishment of permanent U.S. military bases, abets Israeli security, and rules out any prospect of a Sharia-based legal system that might enhance the strength of anti-American religious fundamentalism (a phenomenon actually encouraged daily by U.S. policies towards Muslim peoples). The 60% of Iraqis who are Shiites must make a choice. Doesn't the Zarqawi letter make it clear? Stand with the Americans against terror, or by resisting U.S. forces make common cause with a man who wrote to bin Laden describing Shiites as "vermin." We're good, they're bad. You're for us or against us. And if you're against us, you're with Zarqawi. Make sense?
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