July 8, 2006
I doubt that I've ever before used the acronym WTF, but this story
delivers good reason to take up the habit. In his most recent broadcast
to the world, Osama Bin Laden proclaimed that Zarqawi's successor in
Iraq is one Abu Ayyub al-Masri. The United States concurred, and offered both a bounty and a history: The
military said al-Masri was born and brought up in Egypt. He then went
to Afghanistan, where he trained in bomb-making before going to Iraq in
2002. However, an Egyptian newspaper reports that this fellow has been holed up in a prison in Egypt for the past seven years. "Sharif
Hazaa [al-Muhajir] is in Tura prison, and I met him two days ago while
I was visiting some of my clients," Ismail, a lawyer known for
defending Islamist groups, told the newspaper. Sharif Hazaa al-Muhajir is another name used by the same fellow. (Incidentally, "al-Masri" means "the Egyptian.")
Mistaken
identity? Possibly. I'm tempted to bump that up to a "probably." As
recently as three years ago, I would have scoffed at any other
suggestion. But this administration has compiled such an impressive
resume of deception, we can no longer dismiss outright the wilder
theories.
One such theory would hold that Sharif Hazaa/Abu Ayyub
al-Masri is nothing more than a scarecrow, erected to replace Zarqawi
-- the original scarecrow,
outed as such in the press and thus required to "die." To make the new
bogeycreature into a credible threat, the scarecrow-stuffers created a
fake Bin Laden tape. Digital sampling works wonders, eh wot?
Many Bin Laden tapes have been questioned -- see here and here. Conspiracy buffs aren't the only ones voicing doubts: Even Walter Cronkite has toyed with these suspicions.
 Those suspicions come backed by expert opinion. In 2002, a respected Swiss research institute proclaimed a then-recent Osamacast to be phoney. See also this piece by Arabist Kevin Barrett, from last February:The
trouble is, it's all based on a Big Lie. Take the recent "bin Laden"
tape, please! That voice was no more bin Laden than it was Rodney
Dangerfield channeling my late Aunt Corinne from Peoria. I recently
helped translate a previously unknown bin Laden tape, a real one from
the early '90s, back when he was still alive. I know the guy's flowery
religious rhetoric. The recent tape wasn't him.
The top American
bin Laden expert agrees. Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke
University's religious studies department, has just published a book of
translations of bin Laden's speeches. He says that the recent tape is a
fake and that it is possible bin Laden is not even alive. Who
knows? Maybe Bin Laden really did die in 2001, as many have claimed.
Maybe al-Masri really has been in Tura prison. Maybe Zarqawi is living
under an assumed name in Albuquerque. Maybe Al Qaida's central
committee is a conclave of scarecrows.
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