The Zarqawi Question

Josh Marshall has an interesting question: "What do we know exactly about Abu Musab Zarqawi?"

Marshall touches on the contradictory reports about him, all the times he has been killed (but not really), the second-in-commands who are captured with some regularity, and suggests that Zarqawi is a kind of Emmanuel Goldstein, a diversionary enemy on whom we can blame everything bad in Iraq. Marshall cites a Newsday article that appears to support this hypothesis:

Al-Zarqawi's own militant group has fewer than 100 members inside Iraq, although al-Zarqawi has close ties to a Kurdish Islamist group with at least several hundred members, according to two reports produced by an Arab intelligence service....the sheer level of other attacks that he has claimed is not consistent with the number of supporters he has inside Iraq and his ability to move around the country, according to the analysis.

And as Marshall points out, both Bush and Zarqawi himself have an interest in overstating his role.

It's all interesting stuff, but Marshall doesn't mention the most important fact we know about Zarqawi: that he is alive today because of Bush. Given three separate opportunities to take him out, the latest in 2003, the Bush administration chose not to do so--even when he was apparently plotting attacks in England:

In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.

The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.

They killed the plan because there were more important things at stake:

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam. [emphasis added]

We have two possible narratives here. In one, the Bush administration is again--and that 'again' should be heard with a heavy sigh--exaggerating, distorting, and misrepresenting information on national security for political purposes.

The other narrative accepts that Zarqawi is the terrorist mastermind Bush makes him out to be; in this narrative, our troops are being killed by the guy Bush allowed to get away using the weapons we allowed him to get). The first version is bad; the second is criminal.

I like the second version.

I'm not suggesting we embrace the 'terrorist mastermind' portrait for political purposes; our first loyalty should always be to truth over partisanship. What I am suggesting is that if Bush wants to exaggerate Zarqawi's role, let's make sure he pays a price for it.

In other words, bring it on.