Al-Zarqawi Circus Sideshow Continues Unabated

It is sincerely a corporate media circus, a multi-dimensional propaganda effort designed to convince the public al-Zarqawi was indeed alive and then killed by our fearless soldiers in Iraq. As we know, al-Zarqawi was killed some time ago, prior to the neocon invasion of Iraq, and his image was subsequently adopted by the Pentagon, refashioned, and trotted out by Colin Powell at the United Nations. All manner of super-human nastiness was attributed to the ghost of al-Zarqawi, from ricin attacks to a spate of gruesome beheadings. Somewhere along the line, the propagandists in the Pentagon decided to kill al-Zarqawi, and thus chalk up a victory against those who hate our way of life and our freedom to stand in line to use Diebold voting machines.

Now we are told an “autopsy on al-Zarqawi, the leader of the terrorist group al Qaeda in Iraq,” will be performed by “personnel … familiar with background and cultural concerns,” presumably of Muslims and Arabs, never mind the two 500lb bombs dropped on the “al-Qaeda” safe house, reduced to scattered rubble, would have rendered al-Zarqawi to little more than strewn hamburger meat. But then, of course, we are talking about Bushzarro world here, where corporate journalists, basically Pentagon stenographers, never question the absurdity of neocon lies and fantastic fabrications (recall Saddam’s model airplanes, colorfully named “drones of death,” claimed to be “robot aircraft designed to spray poisonous toxins over civilian areas,” and the corporate media sucking it up like a slurpie through a straw, and then asking for more).

As the Bush Ministry of Propaganda, CNN division, would have it, the al-Zarqawi patsy “survived the attack Wednesday in which an Air Force F-16 dropped two 500-pound bombs on a safehouse near Baquba where he was holding a meeting with associates…. Al-Zarqawi was placed on a stretcher by arriving Iraqi police and was still alive when coalition forces arrived, some by helicopter…. Two coalition troops interacted with al-Zarqawi; one began administering first aid, while the second attempted to talk to him.”

However, this is at odds with accounts provided by other witnesses. “An Iraqi man who was one of the first people on the scene of the U.S. airstrike targeting Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said he saw American troops beating a man who had a beard like the al Qaeda leader,” reports CBS News. “The witness, who lives near the house where al-Zarqawi spent his last days, said he saw the man lying on the ground near an irrigation canal. He was badly wounded but still alive, the man told Associated Press Television News…. U.S. troops arriving on the scene wrapped the man’s head in an Arab robe and began beating him, said the local man, who refused to give his name or show his face to the camera. His account could not be independently verified.”

Of course, the CNN version cannot be “independently verified” either, but then it came out of the Pentagon where stories are never questioned, or if they are the journalists doing the questioning are not allowed near the press room again, or are reassigned to research stations at the North Pole.

Al-Zarqawi “obviously had some kind of visual recognition of who they were because he attempted to roll off the stretcher, as I am told, and get away, realizing it was the U.S. military,” Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told Pentagon stenographers via videoconference from Baghdad.

Nice touch, an appropriately climatic end for the al-Zarqawi fairy tale, a manufactured PSYOP program, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald. Naturally, in the rubberneck frenzy to report the demise of the leader of Iraq’s “insurgency,” the corporate media does not bother to reference this story, reported in April.

Reading the details of the al-Zarqawi fiction, we are expected to suspend all doubt, for instance the stupidity of terrorists and the inability of the Pentagon to catch or kill the stupid terrorists. “In an exclusive interview, an Iraqi army colonel told CNN Friday that intelligence from cell phone technology helped U.S. forces find and kill al-Zarqawi…. Col. Dhiya Tamimi said he worked with U.S. forces to monitor al-Zarqawi and his associates’ cell phones, helping to lead to Wednesday night’s airstrike.” Now, if you were a hunted terrorist with a $25 million bounty on your head, would you be casually using a cell phone? Obviously, this al-Zarqawi guy wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. If al-Zarqawi and his associates were such blithering idiots, why didn’t the Pentagon catch them long ago? Not even Osama used his satellite phone after he caught wind of the United States snooping on him, or so we are told.

But never mind. All of this is like watching Independence Day and believing aliens might actually invade.

Anyway, the al-Zarqawi story has all but wiped the Haditha massacre off the front pages, so for our leader and the neocons it is a blessing, albeit it a manufactured blessing.