Demystifying a Supervillain

The media continues its full-court press to finally ridicule the ridiculous nonsense that Bush and Cheney peddle. Today, it's the NY Times pulling back the curtain on the all-purpose terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I'd say they still are buying into way too much of the crap, like here:

There is no dispute that Mr. Zarqawi has brazenly led a campaign of car bombings, mortar attacks, kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq, asserting his responsibility for the devastating attack in August 2003 on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.

Actually, there is some dispute as to whether Mr. Zarqawi is, you know, alive. Also, they quote extensively from a letter allegedly from Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden which was conveniently "captured" last January, without even a hint about questioning the letter's authenticity. Still, the Times quotes some European intelligence officials who think it's absurd to believe that this one Jordanian could possibly be causing this much trouble:

"I do not think that anyone in Europe or the Middle East honestly believes that he is responsible for everything that the United States says he has done in Iraq," said a senior European intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The guy is on the run. He is hiding from the U.S. forces, and he is probably changing houses every night. It would be almost impossible for him to calmly plan and execute the operations all over Iraq that some people believe he has done."

In fact, in the months following the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Zarqawi was virtually unknown to anyone other than Jordanian intelligence officials, who saw him as a dangerous militant with a strong desire to turn Jordan into an Islamic state.

When the press actually questions the super-villainy of the current president's arch-evildoer, you know that pResident is in trouble.