Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Sometimes you really wonder about the quality of US government's Middle East experts. You wonder if they have any who have more than 2 token years of Arabic. We know that according to the Ed Djerijian report's on US propaganda in the Muslim world, there are only 4 US experts who can speak Arabic on TV. I have only seen 2 personally. All this is to say a word about that famous Abu Mus`ab Az-Zarqawi's memo. Much has been made of it, and the New York Times led with a first page story about it a few days ago, and the news of its capture led to the increase of the bounty on Zarqawi's head. Al-Hayat has now published its full text. When you read it you realize that it could not have been written by Zarqawi, who is a street thug, no more. Its writer must have been somebody steeped in religious study with an advanced command of Arabic. It also reads differently from Al-Qa`idah political literature. It most likely is produced by a small Sunni cultish group in Iraq with adherence to Wahhabi doctrine. In the last section, its author actually said that fighting Shi`ites (referred to in the document by differnt perjorative terms) is more important than fighting the Americans. That sounds peculiar. Too overt to be publicly declared. Who knows if this document is authentic anyway.