The recent attacks in that targeted three hotels in the Jordanian capital Amman killing 57 people, said to have been carried out by four Iraqis, including one woman, have been used to further strengthen Washington's claims that the Middle East harbors terrorists and thus justify interference.
Hours after Jordan bombings, numerous Western media outlets reported, citing unauthentic statement posted by an anonymous website, that Al Qaeda in Iraq organisation, led by Jordanian militant Abu Mus'ab Al Zarqawi, was behind the attacks.
The Associated Press claimed that Al Qaeda in Iraq carried out the attacks in Jordan simply because “Jordan has become a haven for Christians and Jews”, and they want to stop that, again linking the matter to Islam and animosity towards “Non Muslims”.
Loretta Napoleoni, a terrorism expert and author of “Insurgent Iraq”, says that Abu Mus'ab Al Zarqawi, the alleged leader of armed groups in Iraq, is nothing but a myth created by the United States.
Al Zarqawi's myth was born on February 2003, when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the UN Security Council the case for war with Iraq, said a United Press International editorial.
Speaking to reporters last week, Napoleoni said that Powell's argument falsely exploited Zarqawi to support a fake link between the toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda network.
She said that through fabrications of Zarqawi, born in October 1966 in the Jordanian city of Zarqa, "the myth became the reality" - a self-fulfilling prophecy, the editorial said.
"He became what we wanted him to be. We put him there, not the Jihadists," Napoleoni said.
Washington's claim that Zarqawi acted as a link between the former Iraqi leader and Al Qaeda network lost its significance after it became known that Zarqawi and Bin Laden became partners only after March 2003 war on Iraq began, stated Napoleoni.
Before Iraq war, Zarqawi's scope focused on the corrupt leaders of some of the Arab states.
In November/December issue of Foreign Policy , Napoleoni's said that "In a sense, it is the very things that make Zarqawi seem most ordinary - his humble upbringing, misspent youth and early failures - that make him most frightening. Because, although he may have some gifts as a leader of men."
Napoleoni stated that the myth of Al Zarqawi helped Al Qaeda's "transformation from a small elitist vanguard to a mass movement", adding that he "finally managed to grasp Bin Laden's definition of the faraway enemy, the United States," adding that, "Its presence in Iraq as an occupying power made it clear to him that the United States was as important a target as any of the Arab regimes he had grown to hate.
"... The myth constructed around him is at the root of his transformation into a political leader," she wrote.
After the U.S. Fallujah offensive in 2004, an Arab satellite channel aired a video showing Bin Laden's first public embrace of Zarqawi and his fight in Iraq.
"... We in Al Qaeda welcome your union with us … Abu Mus'ab Al Zarqawi is the emir of the Al Qaeda organization [in Iraq]," Bin Laden declared.
A remarkable proportion of the unrest and bloodshed in Iraq is regularly credited to Al Zarqawi, and members of the alleged “Al Qaeda-linked organization” in Iraq- The United States has been using the Jordanian born rebel as a shadow to follow in every region inside or outside Iraq where it deems interference in necessary.
“Sometimes it seems no car bomb goes off, no ambush occurs that isn't claimed in his name or attributed to him by the Bush administration. Bush and his top officials have, in fact, made good use of him. Given that the invasion and occupation of Iraq have now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be based on administration lies and manipulations, I begun to wonder if the vaunted Zarqawi even existed,” stated an article by Dahr Jamail.
aljazeera
