Now that the world is aware of "task force 121," I am sure the name has been changed.
THUG OF MANY FACES: EVIL BUTCHER ZARQAWI NOW TOPS MONSTER LIST
By NILES LATHEM
NY POST
September 22, 2004 --
WASHINGTON — The CIA said yesterday it believes the masked man videotaped beheading American hostage Eugene Armstrong was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — the ruthless terror master whose brutal campaign has catapulted him to the top of the anti-American effort in Iraq.
The horrific slayings of the innocent American contractors — Armstrong and then yesterday Jack Hensley — is the latest act of savagery attributed to Zarqawi and his followers, who are also responsible for scores of car bombings and assassinations throughout Iraq that have killed almost 2,000 people.
The tattooed, 38-year-old high-school dropout and former bar brawler-turned-Islamic fanatic is now the most wanted man in Iraq.
Sources told The Post that Task Force 121, the elite Special Forces unit that hunted down Saddam Hussein, is assigned to finding him, and U.S. military commanders have launched airstrikes almost daily against his network in the restive town of Fallujah. "We and the Iraqis are hunting Zarqawi with all intensity. We've gone after safe houses and we've actually killed people, lots of people in his network, but thus far he has escaped," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told Post editors and reporters this week.
U.S. intelligence officials said Zarqawi, whose real name is Ahmad Fadil al-Khalayleh, is an extremely disciplined, religious man.
It is that discipline that he imposes on his organization that has allowed him to flourish as the world's second most prominent terrorist after Osama bin Laden.
He reportedly lifts weights and memorizes large portions of the Koran.
He will beat underlings if he catches them reading anything else but the Muslim holy book — and yet, despite a guttural, uneducated accent, he can be extremely charming to those close to him, according to intelligence officials.
"He is a jihadist of the first degree. This is not someone you can negotiate with. This is not someone who is deterrable. He has to be fought," said Matthew Levitt, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, now with the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy.
Zarqawi avoids all forms of electronic communication and he moves constantly from safe house to safe house, protected by an elaborate network of tribal and terrorist connections. The terror leader sometimes travels to Syria and Iran, where his contacts with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group and the Syrian Muslim brotherhood give him access to money and weapons. |
