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Newsweek's rather odd take on the killing of Abu Azzam
U.S. intelligence officials and counterterrorism analysts are questioning whether a slain terrorist—described by President Bush today as the “second-most-wanted Al Qaeda leader in Iraq” — was as significant a figure as the Bush administration is claiming.

In a brief Rose Garden appearance Wednesday morning, Bush seized on the killing of Abu Azzam by joint U.S-Iraqi forces in a shootout last Sunday as fresh evidence that the United States is turning the tide against the Iraqi insurgency. “This guy was a brutal killer,” Bush told reporters in remarks that were also carried live on cable TV. “He was one of [Abu Mussab al-]Zarqawi’s top lieutenants. He was reported to be the top operational commander of Al Qaeda in Baghdad.”

Bush’s comments came one day after Gen. Richard Myers, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon that the U.S. military considered Abu Azzam the “No. 2 Al Qaeda operative in Iraq, next to Zarqawi.” But veteran counterterrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann said today there are ample reasons to question whether Abu Azzam was really the No. 2 figure in the Iraqi insurgency. He noted that U.S. officials have made similar claims about a string of purportedly high-ranking terrorist operatives who had been captured or killed in the past, even though these alleged successes made no discernible dent in the intensity of the insurgency.

“If I had a nickel for every No. 2 and No. 3 they’ve arrested or killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’d be a millionaire,” says Kohlmann, a New York-based analyst who obviously reads Rantburg tracks the Iraq insurgency and who first expressed skepticism about the Azzam claims in a posting on The Counterterrorism Blog (counterterror.typepad.com). While agreeing that Azzam—also known as Abdullah Najim Abdullah Mohamed al-Jawari—may have been an important figure, “this guy was not the deputy commander of Al Qaeda,” says Kohlmann.

Three U.S. counterterrorism officials, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, also told NEWSWEEK today that U.S. agencies did not really consider Abu Azzam to be Zarqawi’s “deputy” even if he did play a relatively high-ranking role in the insurgency.

The characterization of Abu Azzam as No. 2 to Zarqawi is “not quite accurate,” said one of the officials. According to this official, it would be more correct to describe Abu Azzam as a “top lieutenant” to Zarqawi who was involved in “running” terrorist operations in Baghdad—not all of Iraq. Other top lieutenants operate in other parts of the country, the official indicated. Two other officials agreed that Abu Azzam was a senior figure, perhaps the emir (leader), of Al Qaeda operations in Baghdad, and that he was of critical importance in moving funds to insurgent operatives in the Iraqi capital area. “He’s a money guy,” one official said. “He is significant but not No. 2 [to Zarqawi],” said another official.

One reason to question the official Bush administration portrayal of Abu Azzam is that we can't help ourselves recent Al Qaeda statements and audio recordings have described another Iraqi insurgent leader—a man who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Abdelrahman al-Iraqi—as the group’s “deputy commander,” Kohlmann says. Another Iraqi national, known as Abu Usaid al-Iraqi, has been described in these statements as directly under him in the Qaeda structure as the commander of the group’s military wing. Neither man has been reported to have been captured or killed by U.S. or Iraqi forces, Kohlmann adds. Even the U.S. military in recent months have seemed to attach greater significance to other figures in Zarqawi’s network. Last July, for example, Coalition forces in Iraq issued a statement asking for help in finding yet another insurgent leader—Abu Thar al-Iraqi, who was described as “Al Qaeda’s chief bombing coordinator for Baghdad.” As Kohlmann sees it, the Zarqawi network in Iraq is far more amorphous and loosely structured to accurately place any particular figure in a hierarchical structure. “These aren’t Fortune 500 corporations,” he says.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-09-29
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=130877