Iraq: Times gets Zarqawi story from US military
times: Terrorists unite to plot Iraqi civil war
A terrorist mastermind has united insurgent groups in Baghdad to target the Iraqi Shia Muslim community with the aim of bringing civil war to Iraq, The Times has learnt.
According to US military intelligence sources, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man responsible for the bloodiest acts of terror in Iraq over the past two years, now commands thousands of fighters from various rival groups and is set to order further waves of bombings.
Yesterday the self-styled "emir" of Iraq was blamed for a dozen co-ordinated bombings in Baghdad that killed 152 people, the single worst death toll in the city since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Most of the dead were poor Shia labourers killed by a huge car bomb in a busy square.
"The al-Qaeda organisation in Mesopotamia is declaring all-out war on the Rafidha [a pejorative term for Shias], wherever they are in Iraq," said the 38-year-old in an audio message released on an Islamic website. He urged Sunni Muslims to "wake up from your slumber" and joint the fight. [db: no qualification from the times - as though it's a cast-iron fact that the voice was that of Zarqawi]
Last night the threat was being taken seriously by US and Iraqi officials, who have offered a $25 million reward for his capture. "we have got reason to believe that al-Zarqawi has now been given tactical command in the city over groups that have had to merge under him for the sake of survival" an American intelligence officer in Baghdad told The Times yesterday. Read more
db: Yes, Zarqawi IS the insurgency - it's official, so now we can KILL THEM ALL with impunity - the Nationalists, the Baathists, bereaved and radicalised parents, the abused, the insulted and just about anyone else we please. You is all terrorists apparently.
Update: The author of the Times exclusive above - Anthony Loyd - wrote MY WAR GONE BY, I MISS IT SO which was published in 2000 and was based on his experiences in Chechnya and Yugoslavia. This man is no Chris Hedges and considers war, or did back then, the ultimate rush [he was also keen on Heroin]. He comes form a military family - and himself served in the British army for five years - including a spell in Northern Ireland.
From the New York Times book review:
NYT Books: ....The prospect of peace eventually becomes, to Loyd's mind, "hideous." His self-loathing entwines with his growing contempt for peaceful, prosperous places, and he scorns "the complacency of Western societies." Back in Bosnia for the war's last round, he exults in the fighting. "It was like falling in love again, a heady sensual rush that I wished only to clasp unquestioningly." He even claims he would not have minded dying there and then.
Unfortunately, the world has been producing, during the last few years, plenty of wars to keep reporters with such tastes busy. Loyd, according to his book's jacket, "is now a special correspondent for The Times of London, for which he has covered seven other wars, including the conflicts in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Kosovo." His wisdom may be multiplying amid all the mayhem. Somehow, though, I doubt it. Link
Clearly, it is now the US military he "clasps unquestioningly"
A terrorist mastermind has united insurgent groups in Baghdad to target the Iraqi Shia Muslim community with the aim of bringing civil war to Iraq, The Times has learnt.
According to US military intelligence sources, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man responsible for the bloodiest acts of terror in Iraq over the past two years, now commands thousands of fighters from various rival groups and is set to order further waves of bombings.
Yesterday the self-styled "emir" of Iraq was blamed for a dozen co-ordinated bombings in Baghdad that killed 152 people, the single worst death toll in the city since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Most of the dead were poor Shia labourers killed by a huge car bomb in a busy square.
"The al-Qaeda organisation in Mesopotamia is declaring all-out war on the Rafidha [a pejorative term for Shias], wherever they are in Iraq," said the 38-year-old in an audio message released on an Islamic website. He urged Sunni Muslims to "wake up from your slumber" and joint the fight. [db: no qualification from the times - as though it's a cast-iron fact that the voice was that of Zarqawi]
Last night the threat was being taken seriously by US and Iraqi officials, who have offered a $25 million reward for his capture. "we have got reason to believe that al-Zarqawi has now been given tactical command in the city over groups that have had to merge under him for the sake of survival" an American intelligence officer in Baghdad told The Times yesterday. Read more
db: Yes, Zarqawi IS the insurgency - it's official, so now we can KILL THEM ALL with impunity - the Nationalists, the Baathists, bereaved and radicalised parents, the abused, the insulted and just about anyone else we please. You is all terrorists apparently.
Update: The author of the Times exclusive above - Anthony Loyd - wrote MY WAR GONE BY, I MISS IT SO which was published in 2000 and was based on his experiences in Chechnya and Yugoslavia. This man is no Chris Hedges and considers war, or did back then, the ultimate rush [he was also keen on Heroin]. He comes form a military family - and himself served in the British army for five years - including a spell in Northern Ireland.
From the New York Times book review:
NYT Books: ....The prospect of peace eventually becomes, to Loyd's mind, "hideous." His self-loathing entwines with his growing contempt for peaceful, prosperous places, and he scorns "the complacency of Western societies." Back in Bosnia for the war's last round, he exults in the fighting. "It was like falling in love again, a heady sensual rush that I wished only to clasp unquestioningly." He even claims he would not have minded dying there and then.
Unfortunately, the world has been producing, during the last few years, plenty of wars to keep reporters with such tastes busy. Loyd, according to his book's jacket, "is now a special correspondent for The Times of London, for which he has covered seven other wars, including the conflicts in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Kosovo." His wisdom may be multiplying amid all the mayhem. Somehow, though, I doubt it. Link
Clearly, it is now the US military he "clasps unquestioningly"
posted by exoplanet at 7:17 PM
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