by stickdog99 » Tue Jun 13, 2006 2:03 am
Curiouser & Curiouser:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13256626">www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13256626</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>An Iraqi man raised questions about al-Zarqawi’s death, telling AP Television News that he saw U.S. soldiers after the airstrike beating an injured man resembling the dead terrorist until blood flowed from his nose. The Iraqi, identified only as Mohammed, said he lives near the house where al-Zarqawi was killed. He said residents put a bearded man in an ambulance before U.S. forces arrived.<br><br>“When the Americans arrived they took him out of the ambulance, they beat him on his stomach and wrapped his head with his dishdasha, then they stomped on his stomach and his chest until he died and blood came out of his nose,” Mohammed said, without saying how he knew the man was dead. <br><br>A similar account in The Washington Post identified the man as Ahmed Mohammed. No other witnesses have come forward to corroborate the account. U.S. officials have only said al-Zarqawi mumbled and tried to roll off a stretcher before dying. In announcing al-Zarqawi’s death, the U.S. military said Thursday he was killed outright when two 500-pound bombs were dropped on his hideout. On Friday, the military said al-Zarqawi survived the bombing, which ripped a crater in the date-palm forest surrounding the house just outside Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.<br><br>“It’s not going to be 100 percent accurate all the time, but the first reports are going to be a little confused. There are going to be some conflicting stories,” Caldwell said, adding that the military should have an accurate chronology ready by Monday.<br><br>He said Iraqi police reached the scene first and found the 39-year-old al-Zarqawi alive. “The coalition forces arrived on the scene. The Iraqi police were there. They in fact saw a person on a stretcher. They moved to that person immediately. A medical person started immediately applying first aid to that person. Another person was trying to talk to that person, to try to identify who this was. They were trying to talk to him and ask him who he was,” Caldwell said.<br><br>Wide destruction<br><br>The airstrike killed two other men, two women and girl between the ages of 5 and 7 who were in the house.</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2220222,00.html">www.timesonline.co.uk/art...22,00.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>As they dragged the wounded man {stickdog: supposedly Zarq} from the ruins of the house, an ambulance and Iraqi forces turned up, taking the total number of people at the scene to about 14. The men had barely finished placing him in the ambulance when seven US helicopters landed by the house and four Humvees rumbled through the dust.<br><br>“They were shouting and screaming and in a very tense and agitated mood,” said Abbas. “They lined us up in a ditch and told us to turn our faces. We thought they were going to execute us. I started reciting koranic verses to myself.” The soldiers then took the wounded man from the back of the ambulance, placing his stretcher on the ground.<br><br>“The Americans tore his dishdasha and they kept on asking him through an interpreter, ‘What is your name, what is your name?’,” said Abbas. “They were tearing his dishdasha, not to wrap his head with it as they did later but because they were afraid he might be wearing a suicide belt. They kept shouting, ‘Keep your distance, he may be wearing a suicide belt’.”<br><br>He was not. “Under the dishdasha he was wearing only knee-length white undershorts,” said Abbas.<br><br>Once the soldiers had established the man was not a threat, they started to kick him in the chest, said Abbas and an Iraqi policeman also there. “They kept kicking him, shouting, ‘What’s your name?’, but the man only moaned and said nothing,” said Abbas. <br><br>...<br><br>“When {further one-to-one questioning} was over they took us a distance from the house. They placed five detonations around the house and asked us to open our mouths and close our ears. They then blew up what remained of the rubble house.”<br><br>The next day Abbas saw pictures of the dead Zarqawi on television, his face swollen, cheeks bruised, eyes closed, with a neatly trimmed beard and moustache. There were streaks of blood beneath his skull. He was sure it was the same man.<br><br>...<br><br>{stickdog: storytime begins}<br><br>The search for Zarqawi had started badly. Corporal Ian Plank, 31, a member of the British Special Boat Service, was killed in 2003 when a joint SAS and SBS operation against a house in west Baghdad, where the terrorist was thought to be hiding, went wrong.<br><br>“The intel guys underestimated the threat and they stepped into a hornets’ nest,” said a British special operations source.<br><br>In February last year there was another near-miss. The taskforce had learnt that Zarqawi would be travelling on a particular stretch of road from Falluja to Ramadi.<br><br>An ambush was set up, but the target was late and the special forces troops were packing up when Zarqawi drove by. His vehicle then sped through a second roadblock, but soldiers were forbidden to shoot at it because they were unsure of his identity.<br><br>With troops in hot pursuit, his driver swerved off the main road and Zarqawi jumped out and ran for his life. He would have been caught, say military insiders, had the video camera on a Predator remote control aircraft not swung out of focus and lost him. <br><br>Another close shave came last October when a special forces “A-team” raided an Al-Qaeda safe house in Mosul, northern Iraq, surprising Zarqawi and three of his lieutenants. The team was commanded by Tony Yost, a US special forces master sergeant who gunned down the three subordinates but was killed in the firefight. Zarqawi managed to blow up the house and escape via a tunnel. He was badly wounded and there was even speculation that he had died.<br><br>Apparently rattled by these and other near-misses, Zarqawi decided to go public earlier this year, posing on video, Rambo-style, with an American automatic assault rifle in the desert {stickdog: Yeah, that makes perfect sense!}. The pictures were broadcast around the world and, say intelligence analysts, would have enraged Bin Laden who had not found an opportunity to show his face on video since October 2004 {stickdog: Yeah, that makes perfect sense as well!}.<br><br>Shortly after the broadcast, Task Force 77 received a vital tip. It was told — apparently via Jordianian intelligence — that Al-Qaeda had dispatched Sheikh Abdel Rahman, a new “spiritual adviser” to liaise with Zarqawi in Iraq. Armed with this information, Task Force 77 was able to start tracking Rahman as he used a Thuraya satellite phone. This, in turn, enabled them to start building a better picture of Zarqawi’s movements.<br><br>...<br><br>“They came to the conclusion that they could not really go in on the ground without running the risk of letting [Zarqawi] escape,” said Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary. “So they used air power and attacked the dwelling.” {stickdog: Yeah, because those two women & that little 6-year-old girl were VERY tricky targets.}<br><br>...<br><br>Yet the durability of the global Al-Qaeda hydra was demonstrated only last week when Islamic groups in Somalia, suspected of harbouring Al-Qaeda terrorists, defeated warlords who had been financed and supported by the United States. The Islamist groups seized control of the capital, providing a new haven for Al-Qaeda supporters. {stickdog's note: Yeah, wherever US supported despots are having trouble governing, it's the Al Kayta guy's fault!}<br><br><br>...<br><br>Intelligence sources predict more “targeted assassinations” of key insurgent figures in Iraq in the coming weeks and months. The tactic will be similar to that adopted by the Israelis against Hamas leaders, according to Dan Goure of the Lexington Institute, a think tank with ties to the Pentagon.<br><br>...<br><br>Baghdad will be divided up sector by sector, following the example set by the British Army in Northern Ireland. “It’s a useful model because you’re trying to suppress a minority — in this case the Sunnis — while at the same time trying to protect them from a majority, the Shi’ites,” said one source. </em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <p></p><i></i>