Still a Fool( Best of the web today

Opinion Journal ^ | July 19, 2007 | James Taranto

[Kaslin]

Here's a fascinating story from today's New York Times:

For more than a year, the leader of one the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi called Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, Mr. Baghdadi issued incendiary pronouncements. Despite claims by an Iraqi Interior Ministry official in May that Mr. Baghdadi had been killed, he appeared to have persevered unscathed.

On Wednesday, the chief United States military spokesman here, Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, provided a new explanation for Mr. Baghdadi's ability to escape attack: he never existed.

General Bergner told reporters that a senior Iraqi insurgent captured this month said that the elusive Mr. Baghdadi was actually a fictional character whose declarations on audiotape were read by a man named Abu Abdullah al-Naima.

General Bergner said the ruse was devised by Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the Egyptian-born leader of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Although the group is mostly Iraqi, much of its leadership is foreign, and Mr. Masri was reportedly trying to mask the outsiders' dominant role.

So the enemy has engaged in a propaganda effort designed to fool people into thinking that the Iraqi branch of al Qaeda is a domestic outfit. Among those fooled, as we noted last week, were the editors of the New York Times, who, according to public editor Clark Hoyt, "circulated a memo with guidelines on how to distinguish Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia from bin Laden's Al Qaeda." And the Times continues to follow those guidelines even in a story that shows how it serves enemy propaganda!

[Red_Devil 232]

Abu Abdullah al-Naima "the voice of Baghdadi" needs to find a deep spider hole!!!

[tje]

Just whose side are they on?

(as if I didn’t know)

[tang-soo]

Kilroy was here!