"If Zarqawi is in Iraq, how difficult can it be to find him? He is, after all, an amputee. Even an amputee with a prosthetic leg tends to stand out in a crowd. With any support from the natives, a CPA investigator who said "I'm looking for a one-legged Jordanian" would have a fair chance of generating some leads" ("The Zarqawi Gambit, Part 2," <http://www.counterpunch.org/weiher03092004.html>).
***** Is Zarqawi Really the Culprit? Evidence tying an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist to the latest Iraqi bombings is murkier than U.S. officials are letting on WEB EXCLUSIVE By Rod Nordland Newsweek Updated: 3:01 a.m. ET March 07, 2004
March 6 - The stark fact is that we don't even know for sure how many legs Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi has, let alone whether the Jordanian terrorist, purportedly tied to al Qaeda, is really behind the latest outrages in Iraq. . . .
Aside from the evidence suggested in a letter attributed to Zarqawi intercepted by officials earlier this year, we don't really know much more now than we did when Secretary of State Colin Powell made the case before the U.N. Security Council for war in Iraq in February, 2003. In that presentation, Powell cited Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad -- where he may or may not have gotten an artificial limb fitted after a wound suffered in Afghanistan -- as, if not a smoking gun, at least a smidgen of a powder burn linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. 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. It was an electronic document on a CD-ROM, so there's no way to authenticate signature or handwriting, aside from the testimony of those captured with it, about which the authorities have not released much information. . . .
<http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4466324/> *****
"Alleged Statement Claims Al-Zarqawi Dead," Thursday March 4, 2004: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3819964,00.html>. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>