I am going to recommend to others the reading of this article , it appears to have many facts and interesting analysis which should be considered when judging the conflicts in the Middle East . Indeed , “if Americans only knew” .

yur are the best muxhahid Ebu musab al zarkavi rihimullah.. strong men .., Lowe you for the snake of Allah Fisabillilah , hope to meet you in jannah Aminn

i really think that genocide is wrong and that al zarqawi needed to die

I’ve also enjoyed the article for what Felicity in the first comment calls the author’s commenting on the great complexity & competing multi-facetedness of the insurgency in Irag, noting Zarqawi’s somewhat minor role in it, despite what certain media outlets and government spokespeople would have one believe.

Thomas Cooper plagiarizes my points, it seems, or else another great mind!Read Bishop Spong’s"Why Christianity must change or die,p152.As the song says , he is almost persuaded- to be an atheist!

Turning the other cheek can lead to more violence. Forget Yeshua’s worthless words and use common sense. The god of the New Fables-Yeshua - is the Yahwe of the Old Fables. We rationalists use the morality Michael Shermer des cribes in “The Science of Good and Evil.” Ghandi and King did not go against such evil.  Errantists just gloss over the n onsense of their Fables.

Let’s congratulate ourselves… We are winning the war that Iran could not on Iran’s behalf.
Too bad we’ll never benefit from it.  My heart goes out to the families of those young soldiers (many not old enough to drink) who died in Bush’s crusade.

2006-06-15 George Will on Zarqawi’s death

Look at his eyebrows how high they are the other 22 picture eyebrows closer to the eyes !!
my 6 cents ?>:”

Comment #11569 by Lefty on 6/11 at 8:15 pm
“Self defense against people who strap bombs to themselves and blow themselves up in order to target innocent civilians is not even murder, much less a holocaust.”

Simple populatioin dynamics will force a decision, either a secular state, or an increasingly harsh religious one. If the latter there is only one possible “Final solution” either wholesale or in drawn out bits. Otherwise oppressed angry people will continue to strap on bombs.

If you blame all people who did not strap on the bombs for those who did, you create your own enemy faster than they destroy themselves. The Isrealies suffer from the thoughtlessness of their founders and have no honorable solution to their problem. Acting on religious beliefs, regardless of religion, can have that effect. As Americans in Iraq, are finding also.

_on Topic_ great article, I would like to see more detail of the realities of the situation there. The complexities have grown more important in the last few years, and no solution can be discovered untill they are understood.

http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Tarpley/0606/20060610_Sat_Ta rpley2.mp3

I was listening to Ralph Shoneman on Tarpley’s World Crisis radio. He cited some source that said that Zarqawi was already dead in 2004. Also the video that showed “Zarqawi” executing Nick Berg revealed a man wearing US issue army boots and a gold jewelry. In the Middle East only women wear gold jewelry. On top of that, Zarqawi’s death photo shows a remarkably whole corpse. The US media said that two 500 pound bombs were dropped on Zarqawi’s house. Don’t you think the corpse would look like a crispy coal after that? With people like Gore Vidal on board, I would think Truth Dig could be more skeptical.

Comment #11526 by July Canute on 6/11 at 6:01 am

“The actual terrorists on this planet are George Bush and the vile Jewish zionist neo-cons like Bill Kristol and Olmert Emud.  It is shocking and uncivilized to plaster those photos on your website.  This man is a creation of a zionist holocaust and people who have stolen the White House. . . .”

Did you mean Ehud Olmert?  I would agree that there is probably no bigger fool in the world than a right wing Jew.  And yes, BushCo are fascists, liars, crooks, torturers and murderers.  But to even utter the term “zionist holocaust” is beyond outrageous.  It’s absurd! The holocaust was an attempted extermination of the entire Jewish population of the world.  Zionists haven’t tried, nor would they ever try, to exterminate anyone.  Self defense against people who strap bombs to themselves and blow themselves up in order to target innocent civilians is not even murder, much less a holocaust.

Comment #11512 by G-Delic on 6/10 at 6:16 pm

“I agree with everything above but the “Fundamentalist Christian” part.  I think by stereotyping a group people rather then individual opinions, it’s just trying to futher perpetuate the blame game.  This is not a Fundamentalist Christian crusade of revenge against Muslim Terrorists.  I find myself on many occasions similarly saying why do Muslims do all the terrorist acts, beheadings, suicide bombings? . . .”

Fundamentalist Christians have a long history (including very recent history) and tradition of as bad or worse.

Let me say first that getting rid of the likes of this man is welcome news! But, let me be cynical for a moment; two 500 lb bombs, both making a direct hit on the house, and leaving total demolition of the house and a multi-yard crater below the house and he lived through it? And the body was retrieved totally intact? Hmmmmmm glad he’s gone, but it leaves a lot of questions unanswered at best!

It’s a bliss for an old journalist to read such well researched and balanced pieces as this. My only sorrow is that it probably will be read by too few, and definitively not by the ones who ought to…

But let me also turn your attention to another piece of journalism which may shed some light on the relationship between Zarqawi and the Bush administration. Greg Palast wrote it, and you may read it if you click on my signature.

The actual terrorists on this planet are George Bush and the vile Jewish zionist neo-cons like Bill Kristol and Olmert Emud.  It is shocking and uncivilized to plaster those photos on your website.  This man is a creation of a zionist holocaust and people who have stolen the White House.

Why don’t you plaster photos of America on this page.  Ask not for whom the bell tolls because it tolls for US.

Let me get this straight:

1. Zarqawi was betrayed by someone(s) close to him.

2. Quite possibly, the betrayal was orchestrated by Bin Laden.

3. The U.S. offered a $25 million reward for information leading to…

4. If they pay it, will the U.S. be funding Bin Laden again?

I don’t see much difference between fundamentalist christians and fundamentalist muslims.

I agree with everything above but the “Fundamentalist Christian” part.  I think by stereotyping a group people rather then individual opinions, it’s just trying to futher perpetuate the blame game.  This is not a Fundamentalist Christian crusade of revenge against Muslim Terrorists.  I find myself on many occasions similarly saying why do Muslims do all the terrorist acts, beheadings, suicide bombings?  And it’s the easiest that way to rationalize the terrible events so that I can justify why the things that are happening are.  But I have to actively fight the thoughts that are so motivated by anger from injustice and remember that when we remove the political, ethnic, and cultural facades, we’re all human beings. 

We have families we love dearly, we feel hurt, we feel pain, as well as happiness and laughter.  At the core we are unique individuals and that’s how we ought to treat each other.

“It took further public relations efforts by the United States to transform Zarqawi into who he became.” And what did he become? A one-year wonder, conscious of the fame conferred upon him by American procaganda, who ended up making a Jihadi’s Funniest Home Video, starring him as a fat clown, and getting righteously blown away, for which even bin Laden and Zawahiri can be happy along with the rest of us, except his family and Michael Berg, I suppose. No, wait! News flash! His family IS happy now that he is with his 72 virgins, so that leaves only Michel Berg.

I’ve also enjoyed the article for what Felicity in the first comment calls the author’s commenting on the great complexity & competing multi-facetedness of the insurgency in Irag, noting Zarqawi’s somewhat minor role in it, despite what certain media outlets and government spokespeople would have one believe.

Looking forward to reading Mr. Rosen’s newly published book, In the Belly of the Green Bird.

Joseph Urban

Good article and excellent background information.

Wasn’t he also the individual who beheaded Americans on video and broadcast this on the internet?
If not, then this should be corrected in the backgrounder. But if so, it certainly is a measure of the man’s brutality- exactly something which should be passed over.
What am I missing here?

Hi Mr Rosen,
Thank you so much for your story. I thought it was very interesting and well written.

It’s great to know how everything unfolded and as you said America helped make him what he was or gave him his power at first.
I will pass your story on to some of my friends because everyone should read it.

Good luck in your future writings.

Darrel King

Turning the other cheek ,could lead to death.To give the robber more is just plain dumb.Errantists read into Yeshua.s nonsense what they will.And Yeshua was Yahwe of the Deluge and the plagues and all that genocide. Subscribe to the rational moralilty of Michael Shermers’s ‘“ The Science of Good and Evil.” Ghandi and King did not face a Hitler or a Pol Pot. Peter Beinart knows rational liberalism. Arthur Caplan and Paul Kurtz also know rational morality.

Turning the other cheek can lead to more violence. Forget Yeshua’s worthless words and use common sense .[Who gives the robber more?] The god of the New Fables-Yeshua - is the Yahwe of the Old Fables. We rationalists use the morality Michael Shermer des cribes in “The Science of Good and Evil.” Ghandi and King did not go against such evil.  Errantists just gloss over the n onsense of their Fables.

Thanks to Zarqawi’s cadaver Bush’s ratings have been drastically improved from -0 to +0. Congratulations !

Turning the other cheek can lead to more violence. Forget Yeshua’s worthless words and use common sense .[Who gives the robber more?] The god of the New Fables-Yeshua - is the Yahwe of the Old Fables. We rationalists use the morality Michael Shermer des cribes in “The Science of Good and Evil.” Ghandi and King did not go against such evil. What ludicrity! Errantists just gloss over hte nonsense of their Fables.

Now we are a nation of assassins and torturers (to say nothing of the many thousands of civilians--and our own military-- who have died for this illegal war).

Hats off to the blood-thirsty press.

May Allah accept him as matyr
That is his good end
now the good ones have departed leaving behind the evil ones(Bush and others)

We are waiting the bad end of the evil ones

In the end,there is no martyrdom,no paradise and no god(s).
If logic and reason had any part in religion,what then would become of faith?

Fascinating article.  Thanks.  If nothing else it erases the Bush administration’s erroneous black and white picture of the Middle East and the world of Islam replacing it with a multi-colored, multi-shaded picture of huge complexity.  One thing, seemingly unrelated, that jumped out at me was the statement that American forces were in Saudi Arabia to protect it from Saddam, which led me to wonder if the Gulf War and the Iraqi War were waged partly to defend Saudi Arabia.  The long-time close ties between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family would certainly support the possibility.

It is interesting--to say the least--that people in what many of them call a Christian nation (USA) actually think that the death of a leader at the hands of an enemy will quell an insurgency. Duh! Hasn’t history taught us anything?!

I mean, sure it might happen ... that is the insurgency might start to wane ... I don’t know, but I doubt it. We haven’t given the Muslim street a whole bunch of alternatives to sectarian violence a la strong militias to provide security for their families.

And my view of the truth is that if Iraq stabilizes now ... it will be a huge victory for Iran.

I consider Zarqawi to have been both our enemy and an enemy of the values and pricnciples to which I subscribe. But as Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr taught us so eloquently, violence begats violence.

And the lesson ascribed to Jesus is that the stonger person must offer peace, and the children of God--by definition--are always the strongest. Turning the other cheek is not an act of weakness. This idea was the sea-change from the Old Testament to the New Testament.

It’s amazing how Fundamentalist Christians (in bed with the Neocons) just don’t get it. They are all stuck in the Old Testament with Joshua at Jericho.