(April 25, 2006 ) — In order to keep the contrived “war on terror” alive, and pump up its central figure, the dead Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as a perpetually looming threat, “a rare video” has surfaced, posted on the internet.

“The video, released just days after Iraq named a new prime minister and a high-profile audiotape from bin Laden appeared on Arab TV, seemed a deliberate attempt by al-Zarqawi to claim the spotlight again following months of taking a lower profile,” reports NBC News. “It also came just one day after a triple bombing at a resort in Egypt that killed at least 24 people, including 21 Egyptians and three foreigners,” an attack not yet connected to “al-Qaeda,” not that it needs to be — as a matter of course, virtually all terrorism in the Middle East is blamed on al-CIA-duh.

“Egyptian authorities have not yet said who they think was behind the attacks, but other security experts have said that previous Sinai bombings have borne some marks of al-Qaida or groups affiliated with it,” the neocon owned and operated Jerusalem Post explains.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s unexpected appearance is rather suspiciously timed. Earlier this month, the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Times, ran an article claiming the Pentagon “is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program…. documents state that the US campaign aims to turn Iraqis against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, by playing on their perceived dislike of foreigners.

US authorities claim some success with that effort, noting that some tribal Iraqi insurgents have attacked Zarqawi loyalists.” Such an effort is required because most Iraqis believe al-Zarqawi is a Pentagon contrivance, although the Post does not allude to this fact. “For the past two years, US military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi’s role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the ‘US Home Audience’ as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.”

Now we are expected to believe al-Zarqawi has obliged the Pentagon by appearing in a video — even though, over the last few years, the mercurial terrorist has assiduously avoided being photographed (except as the hooded executioner of the supposedly hapless Nick Berg — if we are to believe the fairy tale of al-Zarqawi’s supposed exploits).

According to NBC, al-Zarqawi decided to be videotaped in order “to display unity among the jihadis in Iraq,” as the fantasy generated by the Pentagon and the White House stipulates that al-Zarqawi runs the resistance (only foreign “jihadis” and Saddam “dead-enders” are involved in the effort to force the United States out of Iraq — everybody else is ready with rose petals, ever thankful for bombed hospitals, destroyed electrical infrastructure, polluted water, and relatives shot up at checkpoints manned by trigger-happy yahoos who thought they joined the military to get an education, differnet than the education they are now getting).

NBC also points out “Zarqawi appears in front of the Mujahedin Shura Council logo” in the video. The Mujahedin Shura Council is portrayed as an “umbrella” group of several resistance organizations in Iraq.

“The Mujahideen Shura Council is composed of eight insurgency groups in Iraq: al-Qaeda in Iraq, Victorious Army Group, the Army of al-Sunnah Wal Jama’a, Jama’a al-Murabiteen, Ansar al-Tawhid Brigades, Islamic Jihad Brigades, the Strangers Brigades, and the Horrors Brigades, collaborating to meet the ‘unbelievers gathering with different sides’ and defend Islam.,” writes the SITE Institute.

On April 4, the Telegraph speculated “Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the most feared commander in the Iraqi insurgency, may have been forced to surrender his leadership by rival groups, angered by his tactics and the interference of foreign fighters in the Iraqi conflict…. [al-Zarqawi’s] tactics have alienated many Iraqis, even those sympathetic to the insurgency. Azzam, whose father is known as the ‘prince of the Mujaheedin’, said that he was accused of ‘creating an independent group’ in Iraq, ‘making political mistakes’ and hijacking the Iraqi insurgency for his own cause.”

Indeed, the dead al-Zarqawi’s “independent group” hijacked the resistance — not for al-Zarqawi’s “cause,” mind you, but rather the Pentagon sponsored “cause” of portraying the entirely legitimate Iraqi resistance as blood-thirsty thugs and promoting and effectuating “civil war” engineered to result in the balkanization of Iraq.

It appears the Pentagon is attempting to hitch al-Zarqawi’s wagon up to the Mujahedin Shura Council, even though he (or the black op in his name) was rejected as a sadistic self-seeker by the Council, or so we are told.

“It was not possible to confirm authenticity, but it was posted on a Web site that al-Zarqawi’s group and others have used to post Internet messages,” NBC continues, adding more dimension to the absurd al-Zarqawi fable.

“Al-Zarqawi previously has made statements only through audiotapes posted on the Web, although photos of him obtained by the US government have been widely circulated,” never mind that these photos — numbering less than a dozen — are four or more years old and since they were taken virtually no reliable sources have witnessed the one-leg wonder who has escaped apprehension on several occasions.

In essence, the “release” of this purported video (no doubt straight from a Pentagon video editing deck) is a transparent effort to rekindle the al-Zarqawi myth and connect it to the Iraqi resistance at large.

Now, with fresh imagery in mind, millions of gullible Americans will declare al-Zarqawi and his boss, the long deceased Osama bin Laden, alive, well, and on the loose — as Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein of the “Brotherhood” was on the run — thus necessitating a “long war” at the behest of the Straussian neocons, their heirs, and the heirs of their heirs, ad infinitum.

Of course, it will be impossible to “confirm” the “authenticity” of the al-Zarqawi video — that is to say not without a video graphics sequence supervisor, a few animators and technical directors on the Pentagon payroll coming forward and spilling the beans.

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair’s, The Politics of Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays for CounterPunch, Another Day in the Empire: Life in Neoconservative America, with an introduction by Jeffrey St. Clair is now available through Dandelion Books: $17.95 trade paperback. He can be reached at: nimmo@nimmo.com.

Posted in accordance with Title 17, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.

[NOTE: One is reminded of the phony video of an Osama bin Laden look-alike sitting in a tent with fellow conspirators having a good chuckle re the 9/11 bombings. The look-alike was also considerably heavier than Osama with a much broader nose and facial features that didn’t match up. That video appeared on CNN, was shown briefly – too briefly — then discarded. I thought it had worn out its shelf life but amazingly heard a CNN spinner a day or two ago claiming that the tape was genuine and that Osama was caught in the act of chuckling. — Robert S. Rodvik, Author/media analyst]

Bin Laden and Zarqawi Videos Tied to US ‘Psy-Ops’ Campaign
Wayne Madsen Report

WASHINGTON, DC (April 26, 2006) — Earlier this month, it was reported that a Pentagon psychological warfare (psyop) unit purposely hyped the threat posed in Iraq by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi. It was also revealed that a 17-page letter written by Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden in 2004 and selectively leaked to a New York Times reporter in Baghdad.

The contents of the letter was featured on page one of the Times on Feb. 9, 2004. In the letter to Bin Laden, “Zarqawi” said that if democracy took root in Iraq, it would suffocate the terrorists.

On April 10, 2006, President Bush cited the 2004 Zarqawi letter in a speech before Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). This was after it was revealed in the Washington Post that same morning that the Pentagon had hyped the Zarqawi threat and that its psyop team may have even written the Zarqawi letter to Bin Laden as a feint to justify a continued US military presence in Iraq. It was reported that there were Kurdish fingerprints on the supposed Zarqawi letter.

The Kurds see every day of US military presence as helping them in their goal of achieving an independent state. It now appears that the Zarqawi letter to Bin Laden was every bit as phony as the Niger uranium documents. Bush used the Zarqawi and Niger fraudulent documents in his public statements.

The Post‘s information came from a briefing Joint Chiefs of Staff psyop officer Col. Derek Harvey told a meeting in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 2005. According to a transcript of the meeting, Harvey said, “Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will — made him more important than he really is, in some ways . . . The long-term threat is not Zarqawi or religious extremists, but these former regime types and their friends.”

In addition to an Iraqi audience for the Pentagon disinformation campaign, documents from the Kansas meeting indicated that another target was the “US Home Audience.” The psyops were part of a US Special Operations Command program called “trans-regional” media operations. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the media spokesman in Baghdad, called the Zarqawi Psyop campaign “the most successful information campaign to date.”

Yesterday, a video showing a heavy set man purporting to be Zarqawi surfaced on the Internet. Previously, Zarqawi issued his statements on audio tape. However, US authorities have circulated photos of Zarqawi, but that person is much slimmer than the Zarqawi seen yesterday.

The Zarqawi videotape follows by two days the release of another Osama Bin Laden audio tape. Quickly and suspiciously, “US intelligence” sources concluded the Bin Laden tape was authentic. Conveniently for certain neocon quarters, the Bin Laden tape called for support for Hamas and Sudan. Hamas and Sudan rejected “Bin Laden’s” offer of support.

The neocon media immediately jumped on both the Bin Laden and Zarqawi tapes to shake the terrorist tree at the same time George W. Bush’s polling numbers began approaching those of Richard Nixon during Watergate. Amid all the other lies and phony and fabricated evidence of the Bush administration in pushing the war in Iraq and the “Al Qaeda” threat, the media continues to accept prime facie everything that emanates from the neocon propaganda boiler rooms in Washington, London, and Baghdad.

Today, Bush appointed Fox News pundit Tony Snow as his new Press Secretary. This may be part of a strategy to further combine White House propaganda operations with the broadcast capabilities of Rupert Murdoch’s global media network.

If Snow continues the policies of Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan in not granting White House Press Corps dean Helen Thomas the traditional courtesy of the first question — expect even more stonewalling and obfuscation, albeit with a Snow “happy face,” by a White House eager to prevent a routing at the November polls at all costs. Bush and his team are clearly hoping that the White House Press Corps will go easy on someone they’ve socialized with at innumerable galas and political fetes.

Copyright 2006 Wayne Madsen Report. All rights reserved.