{"id":7287,"date":"2006-05-01T16:07:11","date_gmt":"2006-05-01T20:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/7287.html"},"modified":"2006-05-01T16:07:11","modified_gmt":"2006-05-01T20:07:11","slug":"zarqawi-in-the-crosshairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/zarqawi-in-the-crosshairs\/","title":{"rendered":"Zarqawi in the crosshairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Michael J.W. Stickings<\/a><\/p>\n

Kevin Drum has posted<\/a> on the NBC story about the Pentagon’s plans, just months after 9\/11, “to hit the camp of Abu Musab Zarqawi” in northern Iraq. According to the story, Bush “refused to authorize a military strike”.<\/p>\n

The story, from star correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, “was based on anonymous sources” and, predictably, the White House (and most everyone else) ignored it. But now Four Corners<\/em>, an Australian news program, has confirmed the story with a high-profile source: Michael Scheuer, “former head of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit”. Here’s Kevin’s response:<\/p>\n

So why wasn’t Bush willing to hit Zarqawi, a known al-Qaeda terrorist in a known location? Scheuer says he was told it was because Bush was afraid of annoying the French \u2014 a theory that seems a bit of a stretch, non<\/em>? Others believe it was because Zarqawi was politically convenient: having him alive allowed Bush to pretend that Saddam was “harboring terrorists,” thus providing useful ammunition for the war.<\/p>\n

Whichever it is, we now have a credible source telling us on the record that the Zarqawi story is true. We could have gotten him, but we chose not to. Perhaps someone will start off Tony Snow’s White House career on the right foot by asking him about it on Monday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps. But perhaps not. The press ought to do its job, but I’m sure Snow et al. already have the spun version ready to go. Any guesses what excuse the White House will come up with on this one?<\/p>\n

Either way, it looks like yet another failure by this failure of a president. How many are we up to now? I lost count a while back.<\/p>\n

(For more, check out Maha at The Mahablog<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Michael J.W. Stickings Kevin Drum has posted on the NBC story about the Pentagon’s plans, just months after 9\/11, “to hit the camp of Abu Musab Zarqawi” in northern Iraq. According to the story, Bush “refused to authorize a military strike”. The story, from star correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, “was based on anonymous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}