So the "conspiracy theorists" were right once again

[bananas]

Al Z. wasn't killed in the bombing.

[ima_sinnic]

1. taking anything *co says at face value is foolhardy & naive

At Site of Attack on Zarqawi, All That's Left Are Questions



American soldiers Saturday at the site of the house in Hibhib where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in an airstrike on Wednesday night. Two bombs pulverized the brick house.


By DEXTER FILKINS and JOHN F. BURNS
Published: June 11, 2006

<snip>

Along with the scraps, it was mostly questions that remained.

Chief among them was how Mr. Zarqawi, the terrorist leader killed Wednesday in the airstrike, could have survived for even a few minutes after the attack, as American officers say he did, when everything else around him was obliterated. Concrete blocks, walls, a fence, tin cans, palm trees, a washing machine: everything at the Hibhib scene was shredded, blown to pieces.

It seemed puzzling, too, given the destruction and the condition of the other bodies, how Mr. Zarqawi's head and upper body — shown on televisions across the world — could have remained largely intact.

With rumors circulating in the Iraqi news media that Mr. Zarqawi had begun to run from the house as the first bomb struck, American officials said Saturday that two military pathologists had arrived in Iraq to perform an autopsy on Mr. Zarqawi's body to determine the precise cause of his death.

<snip>

much more: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/world/middleeast/11sc...


-------

not to mention, "they" have already revised the story at least 3 times

[KoKo]

11. Interesting that two NYT's reporters question how anything could be left..

from that bomb scene. That means questions are being asked. Also Barbara (Pentagon) Starr of CNN asked at a press briefing with the General in charge of PR..."Was Zarkawi shot?" The General didn't answer and then another reporter asked again: "Was he SHOT!" And the general said: "we don't have reports of that we don't have any information saying that...." (paraphrase)

I thought this was odd because this was on Friday and reporters have not questioned the PR Bushie Generals in such a direct way, before. Since the Press Conference was done by satellite remote the General couldn't see the Press people so the reaction when he say "we don't have any reports of that" was of reporters looking at each other and smiling. Which was also unusual. It made me wonder if the press had heard rumors that he was shot and were challenging. Very unusual since the press has not countered reports before.

Maybe the press was also just playing "devil's advocate" to counter what they knew would be accusations by many about Zarkawi's surviving two 500 ton bombs...though. Maybe they were trying to get ahead of the speculation and skepticism many of us have about everything the Bush's Pentagon reports as truth.

:shrug:

[OKNancy]

2. That hasn't been established yet has it?

It seems the latest news is that he was killed as a result of the bomb.

[rzemanfl]

3. That didn't harm his face while the house was blown to hell and

gone? The only government agency I believe is the National Weather Service and I'm not too sure about them.

[boston bean]

7. lol, good one. The National Weather Service!!! nt

[Bigmack]

10. Wait just a damn 35 knot "breeze" minute...

I get screwed regularly by the NOAA weather people.

I'm a boater, and when they promise "light southerly winds", it ends up to be anything but!

Ah jest don' trust the gummint! Period!

[rzemanfl]

18. At least the next day they don't try to tell you it was calm yester-

day or say the strong winds came from Clinton's dick or Monica's mouth...

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

26. Half the time they're guessing. nt

[pretzel4gore]

4. the clown drunk picking up a bottle...

when i was a lil kid, a group of us were taken to a stadium to watch a barnum/bailey type show, with an emcee explaing everything....there was this drunk clown wondered onto the scene, causing the emcee to try shoo him away etc, but he quickly became the funniest thing we'd ever seen (literally rotfl!)...anyway, during his antics, the drunk dropped his bottle of booze, and the emcee encouraged him to get it and go - but try as he might, the drunk would kick the bottle just as he was about to grasp it....the stadium was full of screaming kids (we thought it was real) anxiously telling the drunk not to kick the bottle everytime etc....the Bush liars are like that foolish old clown drunk. And somehow, the people staging the media story about the killing of an individual who had more courage in his little finger then any stinking bushevik was winking at the crowd watching, chuckling at the absurdity. They truly despise the people, and this story just shows it again, we are thought less intelligent then little kids, our interest is something to be used to 'amuse' us even if the majority of us know exactly what the punks are doing.....

[cantstandbush]

5. I said from beginning that he was killed first and his head preserved

the bombing was another cover up. We bomb mostly to cover up something unseemly on the ground.

[global1]

6. Maybe Bird Flu Did Him In?,,,,,,,nt

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[The Magistrate]

9. Nothing Of The Sort Is Demonstrated, Sir, By These Further Accounts

The accounts from a neighbor, and an anymous policeman, agree that the man was seriously injured in the bombing; indeed they say the took him out of the rubble. So no speculation the man was "planted" on the scene receives the slightest support from them.

One of the main points of early speculative disagreement with the official account was the claim the man could not have had so little apparent injury from the bombing. These new accounts hardlly support that view.

The only important addition from these new accounts is the claim contained in them that the man was beaten by soldiers arriving on the scene. Though unpleasant to cointemplate, that is within the bounds of possibility in the atmosphere of partisan war. But it establishes nothing relating to any grand design involving this man and the C.I.A. or any other U.S. agency. It is certainly somethimg U.S. officials would strive to hush up, but that is about as normal a thing as eggs for breakfast, and of no signifigance.

Nor are the accounts sufficient, even, to demonstrate that the man was killed by beating and not by his injuries sufered in the explosions. Pressure on the chest of a man already bleeding badly internally certainly would produce a flow of blood out of the mouth, but it would not be owing to injury from the blow. Internal bleeding kills many persons even in a hospital setting.

[KoKo]

12. but....the OP didn't say he had been "planted," just said he didn't die

in bombing. :shrug: Unless the OP edited the post before I read it, I didn't see a theory about anything else except he didn't die when the bomb hit.

[The Magistrate]

13. The Form Of "Conspiracy Theory" In This Matter, Ma'am

Is shaping up into solid form even as we speak.

A dispute over whether or not he died immediately in the explosions, or shortly afterwards, is hardly an element of conspiracy or conspiracy theory as that term is generally used. It is simply an innaccuracy, the cause of which may run from ignorance on a spokesman's part to deliberate falsehood.

There are two major lines that can be properly called "conspiracy theory" emerging from this incvident. The first is that Zarqawi was actually in custody, or even dead, for some while before this incident, and that this incident was staged to announce his death at a propitious time. The second is that Zarqawi is a complete fiction, and that this incident was staged to close out the fairy-tale, with a body simply acquired and planted on the scene. In either line, embrodery to claims he was badly harmed beforehand, for versimmilitude, and to a point that ensured he would be unable to speak coherently, can be readily incorporated.

[KoKo]

14. As a "mod" you were looking to

head off "trouble? downthread?" :shrug:

[The Magistrate]

15. Well, Ma'am

"You might say that: I couldn't possibly comment."

[bananas]

23. Thank you, I worded it carefully

And what I said was undeniably 100% correct, as you point out.
Thank you.

[The Stranger]

17. Holy apologist, Batman.

That the man was captured alive, then killed is extraordinarily significant.

It shows the utter disregard for the rule of law that the Bush criminal Administration has.

It is against the law in every jurisdiction and under every body of law to execute someone (whether you beat them to death or fire a bullet into their body) extrajudicially.

[The Magistrate]

20. Do You Think So, Sir?

In relation to the point raised by the person who commenced this particular discussion, whether a crime was or was not committed is quite irrelevant. All accounts agree the man was present when the bombs exploded, survived the explosions briefly, and died on the scene.

[The Stranger]

21. I think the issue of whether a crime was committed is highly relevant.

It just isn't something that people want to talk about, or face.

We have become accustomed to the endless series of crimes committed -- Shock and Awe, Invading Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Haditha, Fallujah, warrantless wiretapping, concentration camps, non-judicial executive courts, torture, massacres, murder.

It has become too much for most people: Change the channel. No, make mine a double hamburger. Pour me a drink. Leave me alone. Just don't talk about it any more. I didn't have anything to do with that, okay?

But those of us who see how far we have fallen must not slumber. The law still means something, and we must continue to remind them about it. Speak truth to power.

No one is above or below the law. No one.

[The Magistrate]

24. Not To The Point Raised Here, Sir

In other connections, certainly. And if the man was beaten to death, which it is far from clear at this point that he was, that would certainly be a crime.

In the larger points you raise, matters are less clear, and certainly are not one-sided. The various Iraqi partisan bodies routinely target non-combatants, and conduct massacre, torture, kidnapping and murder of prisoners. From the point of view of pressing a political line successfully in this country, denunciation only of the actions of the U.S. is a very poor choice: most people are aware the criminality is engaged in by all parties, and will view a line directed only against U.S. actions as proceeding from bias and prejudice, and reject it and its promotors out of hand. A great many of those who will do so will be people who would just as soon see the occupation of Iraq ended, and the soldiers brought home, or turned to another purpose, and alienating such people will only benefit the present regime.

[The Stranger]

27. Actually, it is right on point.

First, I'm glad you agree with me regarding the importance of possible crimes committed after apprehending the subject while he was still alive.

Second, that "Iraqi partisan bodies routinely target non-combatants" -- whether or not this is true -- simply cannot be proposed to excuse the actions of U.S. forces, or investigation and prosecution of any crimes arising out of their actions. The U.S. forces must operate within rules of engagement and international law. And to try to muddy the waters on this issue is an extremely serious disservice.

Rather, if other groups target non-combatants, then they should be held to the rule of law as well. And "(f)rom the point of view of pressing a political line successfully in this country," it is necessary that politicians operate within and understand the laws. Somehow, at some point, this most basic fundamental requirement has been lost. And this isn't a political liability of Progressives, but one of the current Regime.

This is particularly important in light of the extraordinary corruption and graft plaguing the present Administration, not to mention the egregious violations regarding Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Fallujah and Haditha. Rather than try to excuse yet more violations of law, it is important to reassert the law, and let the wheels of justice move, however slowly they must.

[The Magistrate]

30. You Miss Two Points, Sir

That are, unfortunately, important ones.

The fact that both parties to a conflict conduct themselves in a criminal manner is not raised to excuse either, though certainly some will attempt to use it in that manner, from either directon. It cannot muddy the waters, either, for these are already as full of silt as it is possible for them to be, and most everyone, even those who pay little attention to the matter, is aware of this. What does diservice to discourse and judgement are attempts to present the situation as if only one side misbehaved, or as if the misbehavior of one excused the other. Attempts at this are common on both ends of the political spectrum.

The problem we on the left face is devising and pressing a political line in this matter that will resonate with the greatest proportion of the voting public. A line which focuses on violation of the laws of war by the country's soldiery will fail to achieve this. It will meet great resistance from people who love their country and identify with it, and feel it a great and good place that is generally in the right. It leaves those who press it open to devastating ripostes, such as that they are excusing the crimes of the other side in the conflict, that they see nothing but the faults of the country, and even that they are disloyal to, and filled with hate for, the country. These charges are generally well recieved, as the history of the popular perception of the left among the people of our country over the last several decades amply demonstrates.

[The Stranger]

31. No, not so much.

We simply cannot sacrifice so much simply for notions of public perception. It would rob the Left and Progressives of who they are, nor has such sacrifice of principle served the Left in the past. At least one recent Presidential election comes to mind where trying to placate the Right resulted in defeat.

And the very act of allowing an investigation to be conducted into the actions of U.S. forces is not "attempt(ing) to present the situation as if only one side misbehaved." On the contrary, it is having the very freedom to ascertain whether one side has misbehaved at all, which is something many seem to want to bury, excuse or prevent. And these types of events have been the subject of cover-up after cover-up, and whitewash after whitewash. People don't like to admit it when they have done something wrong.

With regard to the perception of the Left, we must not and cannot sacrifice what we know to be moral and correct for what "will resonate with the greatest proportion of the voting public." What you perceive as the beliefs of the voting public is a function of endless campaigns of unadulterated propaganda by a corrupt and complicit mass media, not the true values of the U.S. public. (Indeed, I thought I was the pessimistic one around here.)

Nor has the investigation and exposure of war crimes been a failed position in the past. Think of the U.S. merely four decades ago. The "great resistance from people who love their country and identify with it" dissolves easily if the facts can be presented to them. And we have seen this happen in the past six months despite the continuing and even elevated levels of propganda emanating from the corrupt and complicit mass media.

On the other hand, as a Veteran from that period discovered in 2004, pandering to the Right leads to failure. No one can do the Right better than the Right. It plays into their hands with allegations of "flip-flopping" and indecision. What is required is an independent, strong stand on the Left. As I have pointed out again and again, once that alternative is provided, then the constituency and the people and the votes will follow. But you must first give them something to vote for. You must stand for what you stand for.

[The Magistrate]

32. What Resistance, Sir, Do You Believe Dissolved Several Decades Ago?

Disenchantment with Viet Nam on the right, predicated on belief the thing was not being pressed to victory and therefore was a pointless waste, had as much to do with withdrawl from the venture as left pressure on anti-war lines. The widest popular perception of U.S. conduct in that war remains that whatever atrocities U.S. forces committed are more than balanced by atrocities committed by the enemy, both during the war and subsequently after their victory; a very large number of people, including many veterans, continues to deny the U.S. committed atrocities at all. The idea U.S. withdrawl from Viet Nam occured because the people of the country came to generally believe the enterprise was criminal and in the main an exercise in atrocity is quite mistaken.

Nor is the current disenchantment of the populace here with the venture in Iraq predicated on a belief the thing is a crime and in the main an exercise in atrocity. People largely perceive it as having failed, and sensibly enough are inclined to liquidate a failed venture without further waste of effort; people perceive the leaders in charge of the effort, and responsible for having begun and pressed it, as having bungled something they thought would be a cake-walk, and people are inclined to dislike and dismiss incompetent leaders. People do not much like things like the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, but they do not much care about them, either, and if they thought matters were going well otherwise, would be happy to overlook that sort of thing. Feeling that things are not going well, they tend to view these items as merely more elements of incomptent bungling, rather than occassions for moral outrage. Items like the Haditha massacres fall into a similar class: most people will acknowledge the men who did it did wrong, but will be inclined to excuse them from any great moral culpability on the grounds that were over-stressed by the strain of combat and sumply lost their heads. They will see this as more reason to believe the occupation is doomed to failure, but not that it is a great and criminal wrong.

It does not matter whether a widespread and well rooted popular perception is accurate or no, or come by honestly or is the product of systematic deception. All that counts at the moment one confronts it is the fact of its existence, and the necessity of taking it into account in one's calculations, if they are to have any chance of correctly assessing what is the course most likely to succeed in the actual circumstances faced. If you try and lay plans on the basis of things that are not present in the situation, or in laying plans ignore factors that are obviously present, those plans will fail, and it does not matter at all how well they might have worked if the circumstance was actually what you wanted it to be.

"An independent, strong stand on the Left" can only succeed if, in selecting the lines it will press, it takes into account the actual circumstances of the existing political climate, and what the people to be moved in the desired direction actually feel and believe, and what they actually respond to reliably. If the conventional lines employed by the left over the last several decades were formulas that actually did this, then they would have succeeded, which they manifestly have not. Merely repeating them more loudly or more frequently will not alter the result from what it has been to date. It is an axiom of strategy that an attack which has failed should not be renewed in the same form on the same line, and that a mere increase in weight devoted to the effort does not count as either a new form or a new line.

[The Stranger]

33. The failed strategy has been trying to out-Right the Right.

If any attack has failed, it has been this one. Trying to become Right Wing lite has been a disaster. Talking tough about war and killing, instead of attacking the flawed foundations for the war and the killing, merely being a "that is not so" instead of demonstrating the fundamental fallacies on which the Right operates. Every time a Democrat talks tough and tries to out-hawk the hawks, Karl Rove cracks his knuckles and beams. And Sisyphus pushes the rock up the hill.

And political climates change. But they change when offered new directions and visions. Some see this: consider Russ Feingold or Howard Dean. If anything, they have shown that the only way to weather the attacks from the complicit and corrupt media is to stand against the attacks, tenaciously, never wavering, even increasing the virulence of what are nothing more than Progressive positions. How did these become something of which to be ashamed?

Foreign wars bankrupt countries' treasuries and lead to loss (or theft) of civil liberties. That is why the Founders only allowed the Congress the power to declare war. They had seen the executive seize power in the past by throwing the country into war, taking civil liberties in the name of security, and siphoning off the gross domestic product. Eventually, the public tires of this. Although the problem of debt did not plague the U.S. during the Vietnam war, as it does now, still the public is growing weary of it.

And the war in Vietnam was ended by a grass-roots, progressive movement ending it. The current group of bloodlusting hawks did not, at that time or any other, decide to give up the war there. It became massively unpopular. And the atrocities there, and images of the atrocities there, played a critical role in broadcasting the crimes being committed, and the unjust nature of the conflict. Images of children burning from napalm screaming in agony, a roadside execution of a Viet Cong with a pistol, and, of course, Mai Lei. The people began to realize crimes were being committed, and they did something about it.

So instead of shrugging because of notions of the "political climate," we need to be truthful, with ourselves and with others, about what is going on. Any basic belief in humans as just creatures requires the concomitant belief that when presented with a choice between doing right and wrong, they will choose to to do right, not wrong. Somehow they must be given that chance.

[The Magistrate]

34. There Does Not Seem, Sir, Much Cause To Suppose Humans Are Just Creatures

For reasons which escape me, Justice is often spoken of as something singular that all can or would regard identically, but that is not so. People want justice for themselves in regard to others, but no two persons, particularly persons involved in some dispute, will agree on what justice is. It is most generally regarded as something that vindicates one's own view, and sets aside some other's view. Nor is there any particular reason to believe people, confronted with the choice, will generally choose to do right, not wrong, or perhaps, more precisely, there is no particular reason to believe what one person considers doing right bears much relation to what another person considers to be doing right, and much reason to acknowledge what one person considers to be doing right, another person will consider to be doing wrong. What people can be relied on to do pretty consistently is to act in ways they feel will benefit themselves, whether in material terms, or in the less tangible but nonetheless real and powerful spheres of experiencing pleasure or spiritual exaltation.

Despite your reiteration of it, it remains but a comforting myth, the left equivalent of meat-loaf and mashed potatoes soaked in gravy on a winter night, that an anti-war grass-roots movement ended the Viet Nam war. It did not. The disenchantment with the venture spread far beyond left circles, and the participants in the anti-war movement were widely despised among the populace even as the unpopularity of the war increased. Most people did not, and still do not, care in the slightest whether that conflict was unjust or criminal or conducted atrociously: what took the heart out of the wide popular support that war enjoyed at its commencement and through its earliest years was the growing realization it was not going to be won, and therefore had better be abandoned, as hardly worth the effort being made. People generally recognize war is a harsh and cruel business, and are not much concerned by what may go into winning one: what people do not like in war is the prospect of failure in it, and when a failing war can be brought to a halt without putting the homeland to any immediate danger, they will be all for the liquidation of the venture on whatever terms can be got. Defeat in Viet Nam posed no immediate danger to the homeland; neither will defeat in Iraq. This is the key to present popular sentiment on the latter enterprise, and we need to keep our eyes open about it, and not imagine it is something, perhaps something more agreeable to our own sensibilities, that it is not. Otherwise, our lines of political attack on the matter will prove fruitless and even counter-productive.

At the foundation of your comments, Sir, seems to lie a belief that war is inherently rightist, and opposition to war is a fundamental principle of leftism. That is far from the case. Leftism was born as a fighting creed, aiming at nothing less violent than revolution itself, and leftists, whether as revolutionists, or as leaders of left governments from Revolutionary France down to the Communists of modern times, have routinely engaged in violence and war when it seemed adviseable and necessary for the advancement of their views. The idea that the left is an unwarlike and pacifist thing is pretty recent, and largely confined to the Cold War era West, where it owes much to a disinclination by some left factions to participate in that subtle conflict, which, as much as it was a conflict between the Capitalist and Communist systems, was also a sort of civil war on the Left, between the Communists and more libertarian strains of Left belief. The difficulty stemming from the Left being viewed as something unwilling from its core to engage in war is fundamental, and crippling in a democratic polity. War is, and will remain, one of the major tools of statecraft and a principle function of the government of any state. A political element which declares in advance it is unwilling to wield that tool and carry out that responsibility at need will be politely excused from service in governance by the people, the same way a person who declares he or she could not possibly vote for a death penalty is excused from service on a jury hearing a murder trial where such a sentence is possible under the law: no hard feelings, but clearly not up to the job in hand.

[The Stranger]

16. And the apologists were wrong once again.

The official line that came out was wrong, was a lie.

It is impossible to overstimate the criminality, devilish deceit and utter evil that is this Administration.

[AliceWonderland]

25. Indeed

You'd almost see a ... pattern.

[muriel_volestrangler]

29. So how many people died exactly when a plane struck each tower of the WTC?

Far less than 2,726, I suspect. Would you say that people who say all those people died when the planes flew into the towers are lying, then? Is it important to distinguish between those who died in the first explosion and those who died from injuries received - or those who died when the towers collapsed?

[pinniped]

19. Come on, first they produce a video to get him fresh in Merkans' minds.

Now, a month or so later, he is supposedly dead.

There were no personal 'unmasked' videos the previous years they claimed al-Zarqawi was operational.

Doesn't anyone find this shit just a little too convenient?

* desperately needs a fake victory, this is it. This, of course, changes absolutely nothing.

They want peeps to believe al-Zarqawi was running all around the region cutting off heads and coordinating bomb attacks while dodging numerous airstrikes, numerous raids, and taxi-cab shootouts, all with one leg and shrapnel ridden lungs from previous airstrikes.

All this is made up BS like the fat Osama confession tape allegedly found in a house in Afghanistan. Talk about that shit disappeared in like two days.

[LisaL]

28. Exactly. Supposedly he killed Nick Berg, but his face was

covered. Then the video of him with un-covered face shows up. And just a short time later, he is dead. Makes me want to go hmm...And I also wonder as to why this fat guy couldn't manage to learn how to properly use his automatic weapon, with all those terroristic activities he had been doing over the years.

[Balbus]

22. So whether he died in the bombing or a few minutes after..

is what constitutes a conspiracy theory now? Hmmm... When my son was born, the doctor told me his due date was the 15th of August. But he actually was born on the 18th of August! I wonder what the hell was going on there! Now I'm freaked :(