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The U.S. military says it may never catch the man in charge of the militant Islamic State of Iraq. The reason? Abu Omar al-Baghdadi is a myth.
At least that's what a high-ranking terrorist is telling interrogators. Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner says Khalid al-Mashadani, a senior member of al-Qaeda in Iraq, is claiming that al-Qaeda in Iraq founded a "virtual organisation in cyberspace called the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006." Reuters quotes the general saying: "To further this myth, [al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayub al-] Masri created a fictional head of the Islamic State of Iraq known as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi."
Some background:
? GlobalSecurity.org has a profile of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.
? Back in February, an op-ed piece in the New York Sun took issue with The New York Times for not writing about the Iraqi's rise. Here's an excerpt from Nibras Kazimi's essay:
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi is Al Qaeda's guy in Iraq, and nowadays, the Sunni insurgency is being whittled down to Al Qaeda's activity in Iraq. It's that simple, and he's that important. So why isn't the Times writing that? I think the answer has something to do with what seems, to my eyes, to be a determined campaign to keep the American people from knowing the nature of the enemy in Iraq because identifying this enemy as Al Qaeda casts the debate about the war in a whole different light.
A few weeks later, Kazimi identified al-Baghdadi on his blog, Talisman Gate, as a fortysomething Iraqi who belonged to the same tribe as two prominent government officials. This information was repeated by IraqSlogger. Around the same time, lots of news outlets reported that the elusive terrorist was dead. (Here's a list of stories that appeared on USA TODAY's website.)
Now, if military officials are correct, we know that everyone was chasing ghosts. Or were they?
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WTF is going on here...
At least that's what a high-ranking terrorist is telling interrogators. Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner says Khalid al-Mashadani, a senior member of al-Qaeda in Iraq, is claiming that al-Qaeda in Iraq founded a "virtual organisation in cyberspace called the Islamic State of Iraq in 2006." Reuters quotes the general saying: "To further this myth, [al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Ayub al-] Masri created a fictional head of the Islamic State of Iraq known as Abu Omar al-Baghdadi."
Some background:
? GlobalSecurity.org has a profile of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.
? Back in February, an op-ed piece in the New York Sun took issue with The New York Times for not writing about the Iraqi's rise. Here's an excerpt from Nibras Kazimi's essay:
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi is Al Qaeda's guy in Iraq, and nowadays, the Sunni insurgency is being whittled down to Al Qaeda's activity in Iraq. It's that simple, and he's that important. So why isn't the Times writing that? I think the answer has something to do with what seems, to my eyes, to be a determined campaign to keep the American people from knowing the nature of the enemy in Iraq because identifying this enemy as Al Qaeda casts the debate about the war in a whole different light.
A few weeks later, Kazimi identified al-Baghdadi on his blog, Talisman Gate, as a fortysomething Iraqi who belonged to the same tribe as two prominent government officials. This information was repeated by IraqSlogger. Around the same time, lots of news outlets reported that the elusive terrorist was dead. (Here's a list of stories that appeared on USA TODAY's website.)
Now, if military officials are correct, we know that everyone was chasing ghosts. Or were they?
---------
WTF is going on here...
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