Are there no longer any Rules of War? What happened to the Geneva Conventions, what happened to the moral rudder of the world? Israel and its lackey, the United States of America, are defying all the rules of civilized behavior; and virtually daring the rest of the world to: 'Just try and stop us now!' --Artist and writer Jim Kirwan, For Every Action There Is An Opposite & Equal Reaction [Italics added]

Can anyone verify that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was alive between the day the U.S. announced his existence and the day it announced his death?

In sequential order and before the U.S. claimed it killed him in a raid, all what we know about Zarqawi is limited and extremely unreliable as evidence that he was alive in that same period. Essentially, we are aware of three things. One: we have seen, repeatedly, a photo of a man with a thin face that the U.S. said was Zarqawi. Two: we have heard, repeatedly, the U.S. talking about killings and beheadings by an �al-Qaeda terrorist� whose name was Zarqawi. Three: later, the U.S. showed us a video of a man in exuberant health (an image that screamingly contrasts with a man chased by 150,000 U.S. soldiers and thousands of the �new Iraqi army�) doing military training, and said it was Zarqawi.

Such scant material cannot possibly qualify for �evidence� or prove that Zarqawi existed in the timeframe specified before the U.S. announced him dead. Logically, therefore, since the United States was the sole source of these �artifacts of evidence,� then the entire Zarqawi plot lacks credibility, no matter from which angle you look at it. All other announcements that the U.S. would conduct DNA testing and other measures to verify the identity of the man killed are theatrical smokescreens that not too many are interested in looking behind. In fact, a few days after the U.S. circulated the story of Zarqawi�s DNA, no one spoke about it any longer.

To remind the reader, the phase in which the CIA and the Pentagon published the video of Zarqawi�s training camp was extremely delicate for the American Occupation Regime (AOR). One: the occupation began to show serious cracks in the quest to quell the persistent anti-occupation uprising. Two: the Iraqi puppet regime could not find people for the posts of �defense� and �interior� ministers, agreeable to the U.S. Three: most importantly, American domestic support for the war was descending rapidly.

What were the conditions that accompanied the unraveling of the Zarqawi hoax?

Here is the pre-climax: as the U.S. was circulating its made-for-media �Zarqawi�s training session� video, its military commanders in Iraq announced that the noose around Zarqawi�s neck was getting tighter. In the meantime, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi government announced that they arrested Zarqawi and then released him because they could not recognize him since he shaved his mustache and put on some weight! If that is so, why did Zarqawi (after his assumed release) leave behind a trail of evidence if he knew that his end was near?

Was that announcement a coincidence? No. The U.S. already knew that it had him, and that he was already dead. Some time later, when the Pentagon told of Zarqawi�s death, it claimed it had planted a Jordanian mole who then gave him up. Of course, all these stories were the garnish to a game of perception and subtle brainwashing.

For instance, is it not strange that a �mastermind of terror,� such as Zarqawi, would trust a person (the mole) that he barely knew to work for him? And, is it coincidence that the �mole� was Jordanian? No. The choice of the nationality of the mole was not accidental: the U.S. conceived it in a way to covey the message that the Jordanian �Zarqawi� only trusted his compatriots. Ultimately, this, in the mind of U.S. planners, would confirm to the public that �Zarqawi� was real and was Jordanian.

The climax: in the same day in which the United States announced that it killed Zarqawi, the following events happened in rapid sequence. First, the Iraqi puppet regime announced it nominated two ministers acceptable to Washington after an impasse lasted four months. Second, the U.S. announced that the security situation in Iraq has improved. With that, the Bush regime wanted to convey the impression that the death of Zarqawi would allow a reduction in U.S. troops in Iraq, which, they hoped, would help pro-war candidates of both parties in the mid-term elections.

The meaning of Bush�s media blitz on Zarqawi�s death was to achieve theatrical effects. In fact, Bush was telling the American public two interwoven lies: 1) with the death of Zarqawi, the Iraqi uprising would soon end, and 2) its puppet regime that rose to nominal power by U.S. appointments is now in charge of the security situation.

The nagging question remains, did the U.S. really kill a fictional or real Zarqawi?

Let us assume that the man the U.S. called �Zarqawi� had existed and that his name was Zarqawi. Explanation: based on the �apparent� resemblance between the dead man depicted in the photograph, the original photo of a man with a thin face, and the live man in a video whom the United States claimed was Zarqawi doing military training, it is possible to say that he really existed. Alternatively, it could have been very possible that the U.S. killed a Zarqawi look-alike (the man with the thin face) and retouched his post-mortem photographs to make them fit the original photo.

But here is where I decisively end the speculation on whether Zarqawi existed or not and begin raising a pertinent question: let us assume that he existed, but with mandatory reservations on the whole issue of existence, and at least within the realm of physical resemblance between the identities presented. If so, where did he spend the past three and a half years before his death?

There are two possible answers. One: frozen in a cryonic chamber after the Jordanian regime executed him while in prison for his anti-government activities, then gave his body to the U.S to use following a precise plan. Two: he was alive and well, but working for the United States who killed him at the end because his role ended.

First hypothesis: the U.S. (or its agent, the Jordanian regime) killed a person who could have been 1) just an ordinary man without political connections, 2) an opponent of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East with some military training, and 3) or an American agent whose time had come. The U.S. then froze the body of the man to thaw it at an opportune moment for propaganda effects. (An Iraqi-American writer, whom I corresponded with, quipped on the appearance of Zarqawi as a dead person with the following: �Next time they are going to thaw the body of Bin Laden!�

The second hypothesis is self-explanatory. In other words, the U.S. killed a man who trusted and worked with the occupation force. This is plausible because among the people the U.S. killed in the bombing were children; meaning, whoever slept in the house was feeling safe. Accordingly, it is extremely possible that the Bush Regime killed an ordinary Iraqi family with a man who worked with the United States to cover up all the tracks of operation: extinguish Zarqawi now!

Where is my evidence?

As you expected, I have no evidence to offer. What I can do, instead, is present a series of reasoned observations on his alleged role in Iraqi atrocities, as well as, on his staged killing. With this approach, i.e., by force of logical inference. I can refute U.S. claims, and, as an alternative, substantiate the observations I made. Remember, the U.S. language of imperialism is not difficult to read; all we have to do is learn its alphabet.

However, regardless of hypotheses or our ability to read the minds of the neocons, it is not possible to analyze the Zarqawi affair without taking notice first of the failed occupation of Iraq.

To begin, the United States of George W. Bush magnificently miscalculated by invading Iraq is fact requiring no corroboration. When Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Cheney, Libby, Rumsfeld, Elliot Abrams, and the other authors of the Project for New American Century, consulted the crystal ball, they only saw the bright side.

They saw a nuclear superpower versus an oil-producing country already perishing under imperialist siege; they saw an international system subjugated by America�s nuclear weapons, bombers, ICBMs, fleets, and submarines. They saw Arab regimes scrambling for safety; they saw Iraqi Arab Shiite clergy assenting to the invasion; and they saw that separatist Kurds would be on the American side under all circumstances.

In the calculations of the neocons, those were the right ingredients for a potential success of conquest. But the imperialist arrogance of the Bush regime to proceed in cooking the recipe regardless of its explosive ingredients, made them discard the dark, revolutionary side of the ball: resistance to conquest � a resistance (as events demonstrated) that Bush and his Zionist clique would never be able to buy or subdue. (After the invasion, it seems that Bush took Colin Powell�s remarks on Iraq literally.

Talking about Iraq, Powell declared, �You break it, you own it.� What Powell and his fascist likes would never understand is that, even when you break something that you do not own, it is still not yours, until the rightful owner lets you have it. It is also striking that Powell who, most certainly, descended from Africans made into slaves, speaks of owning Iraq: land and people.

Once the United States occupied Iraq, creating diversions from the occupation process and the incipient armed resistance had become a central necessity. Since Bush attacked Iraq to colonize or place it under the U.S. imperial system, the clownish clothes of liberator became too heavy to wear. When Paul Bremer vowed to sell Iraq�s state enterprises (of course, the oil sector is the only enterprise of value) to private investors, the scope of the United States in Iraq became evident: imperialist tutelage or colonization by other means.

The second hurdle that Bush faced in the early stage of the occupation was the growing dissatisfaction of Arab Shiite Muslims with the new American order. To clarify: most Shiite clerics, who returned from exile in Iran, believed (or wanted to believe) that the U.S. would invade Iraq, get rid of their personal enemy (President Saddam Hussein) and then would leave. Without a doubt, that was delusional thinking -- why should U.S. imperialism give Iraq and its oil to Shiite clerics whom it considers allies of its enemy, Iran?

But, when Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, Muqtada al-Sadr, Jawad al-Khalisi, and other clerics began complaining about the occupation, the brief marriage of convenience between Shiite black turbans and American neckties showed signs of strain. The situation that the Bush Regime was beginning to confront had become explosive: if the Iraqi Arab Shiites were to rise against the occupation, George Bush would loose instantly, and his only remaining option might have been either withdraw or annihilate Iraq, but keep the oil fields intact.

As an initial response to the escalating threat posed to the occupation by the Shiite clergy, U.S. planners copied the Israeli strategy in Palestine by transforming Iraq, as the administration put it, into the �central stage for the war on terror.� Shortly after, the term evolved into, �Iraq is a magnet for terrorists.� The second response was multiple: 1) eliminate the most vociferous and prominent figures among the Shiite clergy, 2) attack the Shiite population but attribute the attacks to Arab Sunnis or to fringes of Sunnism, such as Saudi Wahabism, and 3) split the Shiites into competing factions.

Notice that, since the occupation, no one, from any Arab camp, has ever attacked the Kurds. This is because the U.S. and Israel had a different plan for them. In fact, if �Zarqawi� were such a vehement anti-Shiite Wahabist, as per U.S. propaganda, then, why did he spare the Shiite Kurds and Shiite Turkomans?

But, why did the U.S. target the Arab Shiite Muslims? The answer requires special elaboration because it involves the combination of two objectives: American and Israeli:

The American objective

When the United States planned to conquer Iraq, it decided to do that in two phases. While the first phase (invasion, occupation, and consolidation with aid from U.S. mercenary states and private armies) was easy to accomplish; the second phase is more complex and more difficult. In this phase, the steps to follow include 1) transfer nominal power to Iraqi surrogates through superficial, fixed elections, 2) territorial entrenchment through military bases, and 3) hence, long-term conquest.

As you can see, this methodical process requires no disruption to be completed. That is, should the occupation regime meet resistance, the entire process will halt and the plan for conquest would begin to falter. Since we already know that the Iraqi resistance is stopping that process on all fronts, an Arab Shiite uprising on the side of the resistance would permanently break down the teeth of the imperialist cogwheel. In that eventuality, Iraq�s struggle for independence would cover the national territory, with the exception of Kurdish provinces.

Moreover, the U.S. is wary of the Arab Shiite Muslims despite its alliance with them and that is because of their confessed affinity with 1) the Iranians who expelled the United States from Iran with the Islamic revolution, and 2) the Arab Shiites of Lebanon who have been fighting Israeli colonialism for over 25 years. Consequently, preventing the Shiites from becoming vocal about ending the occupation was a strategic U.S. objective. Here is the problem though: the U.S. still needed a tactical, temporary alliance with the Shiites until the process becomes irreversible.

Weakening the Shiites but not defeating them entirely was, accordingly, a strategic requirement to tighten the occupation regime while keeping the specter of war alive. (Master of Iraqi death squads, John S. Negroponte, has recently testified to the U.S. Senate on the �impending war within Islam,� meaning the U.S. was about to reap the fruit of its hard work to make such a war happen.

Next, we shall investigate the tactical moves undertaken by the United States and Israel to center that strategic requirement.