Accidental Blogger

Much is being made of the fact that the fearsome Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has terrorized Iraqis and Americans alike with his brutal jihadist tactics during the Iraqi insurgency, is inept with a machine gun. Zarqawi’s own videos, broadcast in the Arab world for recruiting purposes present him as an intrepid warrior and a crack shot. But recent videos released by the US military show Zarqawi behaving more like a klutzy bumpkin than a sophisticated representative of Al Qaida, who has been menacing Mesopotamia. To add insult to this injurious image, Zarqawi is seen wearing white American made tennis shoes under his all black guerilla outfit. (I didn’t know that a poor fashion sense necessarily makes anyone less dangerous.) The Pentagon wants to reassure us that behind all that bluster and chest thumping, Zarqawi and his cohorts are just hapless poseurs. I know that I ought to feel safe. But there is one little inconvenient fact that interferes with my feeling of safety – Zarqawi hasn’t been captured yet. However clumsy he may be with a sophisticated machine gun, he wields a butcher knife with complete ease.

"BAGHDAD, IRAQ – The videotape released last week by the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi showed him firing long bursts from a machine gun, his forearms sprouting from beneath black fatigues, as he exuded the very picture of a strong jihadist leader.

But in clips the U.S. military released Thursday and described as captured outtakes from the same video, al-Zarqawi, head of al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, cut a different figure.

In one scene, al-Zarqawi, the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, appears flummoxed by how to discharge the machine gun in fully automatic mode. Off camera, one aide is heard ordering another, "go help the sheik." A man walks over and fiddles with the weapon so al-Zarqawi can fire it in bursts.

Another sequence shows al-Zarqawi handing the weapon off to other aides and striding away, revealing American-made white jogging shoes beneath his black guerrilla attire. One insurgent later appears to grab the machine gun absent-mindedly by its scalding-hot barrel and drop it."

Very funny. It should be reassuring that we may indeed be dealing with a bunch of bumbling bullies whose bark is far worse than their bite. But the confidence evaporates somewhat when I am reminded of the the caliber of the macho men who are in charge of keeping us safe from Zarqawi and his ilk.  The words of caution that instantly come to mind are:

• Osama bin Laden (Wanted Dead or Alive : Bush, 2001)
• Saddam- 9/11, WMD, Mushroom Cloud (2001 to until recently)
• The 9/11 Commission Report, 2004
• Warnings by Richard Clark, Joe Wilson, ex-CIA employees and retired US Generals
• Katrina, 2005 ("Brownie, you are doing a heckuva job")
• The recently released book by Clark Kent Ervin, ex Inspector General of Homeland Security

and the most important reasons that I don’t feel safe is because ….

• Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld – our very own Keystone Kops, are in charge