Leader of Al Qaeda group in Iraq was fictional, U.S. military says

[CJCRANE]

EXCERPT:

BAGHDAD — For more than a year, the leader of one the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi named Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi.

As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, an organization publicly backed by Al Qaeda, Baghdadi issued a steady stream of incendiary pronouncements. Despite claims by Iraqi officials that he had been killed in May, Baghdadi appeared to have persevered unscathed.

On Wednesday, a senior American military spokesman provided a new explanation for Baghdadi's ability to escape attack: He never existed.

Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, the chief American military spokesman, said the elusive Baghdadi was actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor named Abu Adullah al-Naima.

LINK New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/world/africa/18iht-iraq.4.6718200.html

[bemildred]

1. I've read this a couple times now, and I keep wondering why we are being told this?

Why go back now and tell us that we chased a fiction for "more than a year"?

Guilt? Journalistic rigor? Propaganda? Savaging Obama? It doesn't really work as any of those, though I suppose it might be propaganda like they say.

If the objective was to sow confusion, that works.

[CJCRANE]

3. This was published in 2007, during the Bush administration.

I posted it because I thought it was interesting.

To me information is information, the more the better.

[bemildred]

6. I see your point. nt

[ck4829]

2. All of this while the fabled 'surge' was in full swing

[CJCRANE]

8. It's all shadow boxing IMO...

Some alphabet agency probably created him to gee up the jihadis, then retired him and paid them off when the time came to wind up the surge.

A few years later another boogeyman was needed so they rebooted the Baghdadi character.

It feels like what comic book geeks call "retconning" the narrative.

[Agnosticsherbet]

4. Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi is the reported head of ISIS. If this 2007 article,

if accurate, begs the question, who is running ISIS.

Then we are led to the persistent rumor among anti-Semites that ISIS is actually run by the Mossad.
I will not post a link to that as I do not wish to drag people through pits of racism. Google can take you there.

CJCRANE, great find.

[Chan790]

5. No, you're thinking of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

They wouldn't even be related. "al-anything" in Arabic nations means "from _____________", it's a demonym (a locator name), not a patronym (a family name or surname.) Their respective family/tribal names are Rashid and Bakr. Everybody born in Baghdad is theoretically an al-Baghdadi, including the father of one of my fraternity brothers from college whose father is a retired US Army thoracic surgeon specializing in traumatic injuries. (They unfortunately kept him quite busy the last years of his career.)

For example, my name in an Arabic country like Iraq would (not actually) be Channing Sevenhundredninety al-Connecticutti. Yours might be Agnostic Sherbet al-Sandiego.

[CJCRANE]

7. Do you think the new Baghdadi boogeyman is real

or fictional like his predecessor (as the Pentagon alleges)?

[Chan790]

10. No idea.

I once dated a solipsist. Even when we were in bed together, she was never entirely convinced that anybody or anything outside of her own head existed.

I have as much reason to believe he exists as I do to believe you exist and as much reason to doubt he exists as that his fabled predecessor existed.

It was once said "that on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." I would posit equally that on the internet (or through the simulacra), it's impossible to not be a solipsist. The only reason I know there's atrocities in Iraq and Syria is because I see them on the news. I believe they are real but belief is not factual, it's opinion based on observation which may be altered or colored by the biases of unknown actors or my own desires or the absence of stimuli or false stimuli or...

My opinion is that he's real, or as real as our perception of a person that isn't ourselves can be outside of direct contact.

[CJCRANE]

11. In practice, we have many sources for the atrocities

commited in Iraq and Syria, many of them antagonistic to each other. This makes it more likely that at least some of the claims are true.

As for Baghdadi we have one video and a few audio recordings of him. He could be a real leader or an actor or agent. We don't yet have enough information to verify either way.

As for me I don't claim to represent anything except my own opinions. The links and information I post can be verified or not depending on corroborating information as described above.

[Chan790]

13. I think my larger point was about not having the information to know...

I am, in my own defense, half-asleep and was debating Baudrillaud late into last night with a philosophy grad student; so Simulation and Simulacra is kind of stuck in my head...hence the material solipsism and fog-of-war skepticism of the preceding post.

I may also have stopped making sense or might be talking to myself.

[CJCRANE]

14. You are making sense in a philosophical context

but in a political context those same concepts will put you in somewhat of a difficult position.

(I have the same issue with postmodernism where everything is relative).

However, it's an interesting debate and very relevant to the times we're living IMO.

[Agnosticsherbet]

15. Thanks. I looked up the wrong name.

[xocet]

16. Interesting commentary...

To what extent would such a naming tradition include a country? Would your hypothetical name be extended by al-Amriki?

And would others naturally be extended with the following demonyms?
al-Iraqi
al-Saudi
al-Musri,
al-Masri,
etc. ?

It just dawned on me what al-Musri and al-Masri mean...

[CJCRANE]

9. It reminds me of The Mandarin in Iron Man III.