May 30, 2005

Like soap opera characters who tell us every excruciating detail of their personal lives, we are invited to tune in on the continuing saga, presented in yet another installment (via the internet), of Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi story.

"Al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said he was 'lightly’ wounded but still battling alongside his fighters in Iraq, in a voice message attributed to him posted Monday on the Internet," reports Forbes ( http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/afx/2005/05/30/afx2064236.h
tml ). "It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the statement, which comes after a series of sometimes conflicting messages about the health of the Jordanian-born extremist and his role in the insurgency."

Presently "authenticity" is not a required ingredient since we are so riveted to this evolving (and, not unlike a soap opera, wholly predictable) potboiler.

"I am currently with my brothers and my people in the land of Mesopotamia, where I am participating in combats against the Crusaders and the enemies of religion," declared the "voice," said to be al-Zarqawi, although certainty is left twisting in the wind like the end of a weekly run of Days of Our Lives (be sure to tune in next week).

And like a soap opera, the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi storyline is no stranger to outlandishness. For instance, over the weekend, it was said al-Zarqawi was in Iran (either with or without the permission of Iran’s mullahs, who have no use for a Sunni claiming to hate Shi’as and is said to have killed a tidy number of them in Iraq) and then suddenly forty eight hours later the mercurial one shows up in Baghdad to micromanage "a response to a security push launched by Iraqi forces against rebels in Baghdad that resulted in a string of bombings at the weekend," as Forbes would have it. Abu may be of sub-standard intelligence, but he gets around, seemingly evades checkpoints and military patrols with ease, and possesses a super-human ability to heal his wounds (only days ago, al-Zarqawi’s injuries were life-threatening, now they are described as "light," sustained as he engaged in combat with the infidels). "I think news has reached your ears through the media that I was seriously wounded. I would like to assure you and assure Muslims that these are baseless rumors and that my wounds are minor," confessed Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Iraq.

Like passive soap opera fans, we (or many of us) unquestioningly digest the absurd and often cartoonish Abu Musab al-Zarqawi storyline, either refusing or unable to question the inconsistencies and speciousness of it. And this is precisely what Bush and Crew want—to distract us from reality (and the reality is the United States cannot defeat the resistance in Iraq) and fill up our heads with fantastic stories, especially when lurid facts (soldiers killed when a helicopter is shot down near Baquba) and blunders (the embarrassing arrest Mohsen Abdul-Halim) make Iraq out to be something other than the United States wants us to believe it is.