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Bush Wars Title: Zarqawi 'more powerful as a myth' TAUNTING US President George W. Bush during the videotaped killing of a sobbing, blindfolded US hostage, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi boasted that the al-Qaeda fighters he commanded "love death just like you love life". "Killing for the sake of God is their best wish," the insurgent leader said, drawing a knife to hack off the head of his kneeling victim. "Getting to your soldiers and allies are their happiest moments, and cutting the heads off the criminal infidels is implementing the orders of our Lord." By the time he was killed this week in a US airstrike, Zarqawi was more powerful as a myth than as a man. The killings he masterminded were carefully calibrated to have the maximum psychological effect and feed his legend. His repertoire of violence was a guerrilla version of the "shock and awe" tactics of his American foes. Suicide bombings were planned with great precision but rarely aimed at targets of military value - their symbolic effect was more important. The killing of hostages was also choreographed for maximum shock value and followed a ritual that became grimly familiar. Advertisement: Victims were dressed in orange clothes to mirror the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, and were filmed weeping and pleading for their lives, sometimes caged. Their decapitation - often at the hands of Zarqawi himself - was swiftly distributed over the Internet. Zarqawi's reputation for personal savagery stood out even in a country where brutal killings have become routine, and sparked reports that al-Qaeda elder statesmen Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri were worried his homicidal zeal would undermine support for their militant network. Although bin Laden anointed Zarqawi as prince of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the two men were widely seen to be rivals, with Zarqawi keen to outshine bin Laden's fame and notoriety. US forces also sometimes found it convenient to feed the Zarqawi myth. Most experts believe his foreign fighters make up only a fraction of the insurgency, but the US military portrayed Zarqawi as its most dangerous foe in Iraq. The $US25 million ($33.79 million) price put on his head matched the bounty on bin Laden. The Washington Post reported this year that internal military documents showed the US military mounted a psyops (psychological operations) campaign to magnify the role of Zarqawi in the insurgency. "Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will, made him more important than he really is," military intelligence officer Colonel Derek Harvey was quoted as saying. As a foreign militant whose attacks killed far more Iraqi civilians than foreign troops, Zarqawi was despised even by many Iraqi insurgents fighting US forces, and at times the hatred spiralled into fierce battles between insurgent groups. However, while the US military focused on Zarqawi's role in an effort to turn Iraqis against the insurgency, it also tried to puncture the legend of a fearless guerrilla leader. US officers said they came closest to capturing Zarqawi in February 2005, when his car nearly ran into an American roadblock in western Iraq, heartland of the insurgency. They said Zarqawi escaped by leaping from the vehicle but his laptop computer and two of his aides were seized. The military quoted one of those aides as saying Zarqawi "became hysterical" when he feared he would be captured. Last month the military released captured footage of Zarqawi - out-takes from a propaganda video - showing the al-Qaeda leader having problems firing a machine-gun, and one of his aides grabbing a hot gun barrel and recoiling in pain. US forces even mocked the fact that Zarqawi was wearing sneakers made by American brand New Balance. "A warrior leader, Zarqawi, who doesn't understand how to operate his weapons system," spokesman Major-General Rick Lynch said. "It makes you wonder." The edited version of the video, 35 minutes of footage posted on the internet in April, portrayed Zarqawi as he wanted to be seen - a military leader shown dressed in black with an ammunition belt slung over his shoulder, energetically firing a machine-gun, directing recruits and poring over maps. The video at least gave US forces hunting Zarqawi a better idea of what he looked like. When he began his campaign of high-profile suicide bombings in 2003, with bloody attacks on the Jordanian embassy, the United Nations and a revered Shiite leader, Washington had only the haziest information on him. He was long said to have an artificial leg, fitted in Baghdad during Saddam Hussein's rule - a claim some US officials used to bolster their case that the Iraqi president was conspiring with al-Qaeda. The tale about the leg - like so many of the myths around Zarqawi - turned out to be false.
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#1. To: ALL (#0)
He is not dead...We still have a chance for victory.
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