From The San Francisco Chronicle, 7/23/07:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/23/EDG6QQ4RMF1.DTL&feed=rss.opinion

Wag the cat ... or something

Kathleen Parker, Washington Post Writers Group


JUST WHEN you thought the war in Iraq couldn't get any stranger, a
high-ranking al Qaeda figure who was first captured and then killed --
his body displayed on state-run TV -- turns out to have been a
fiction.

He didn't exist.

The apparently invented character called Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was
known as the head of the Islamic State of Iraq -- believed to be a
front group for al Qaeda.

He wasn't captured, as was reported previously.

He wasn't killed May 1 by hostile fire from U.S. forces, as reported
in a May 3 New York Times story.

He wasn't even real, according to the U.S. military.

All this we learn from a leading al Qaeda figure captured July 4 by
U.S. forces in Mosul.

Khalid Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, who in the interest
of economy will be referred to hereinafter as "Smitty," told
interrogators that Baghdadi was invented by Abu Ayyub al-Masri, aka
Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, hereinafter referred to as "Jimbo."

According to Smitty, Jimbo invented Baghdadi to create the impression
among Iraqis that al Qaeda is a nationalistic group in Iraq when, in
fact, the Islamic State was a Sunni Muslim insurgent group run by an
Egyptian, who hired an Iraqi actor to read statements from the
fictional al-Baghdadi.

Well, it's good to have all that straight.

If you're confused, feel the love.

Confusion is the coin of the kingdom in Iraq, an always-reliable
weapon made sharper by cyber-technology and alphabet-exhausting names.

Whatever else Baghdadi may or may not have done during his fake life
leading up to his fake capture and fake death, he has effectively
killed comedy.

How do you satirize satire?

How do you parody a parody?

How do you caricature caricature?

In a war theater of the absurd, where war is waged by actors
pretending to speak for fictional leaders, does the world die
laughing?

Given that al-Baghdadi wasn't real and his organization existed in
cyberspace, a cynic might be tempted to ask:

If there's no Islamic State of Iraq except in cyberspace, is there
also no al Qaeda?

If there's no al-Baghdadi, is there no Osama bin Laden?

But of course, there's an al-Qaeda.

We've all seen that videotape tape with the black-hooded guys hopping
through an obstacle exercise.

And of course there's a bin Laden -- or at least there was.

Maybe he's alive; maybe not.

If you can invent an organization and a leader in cyberspace, you can
surely keep a bin Laden alive in the hearts and minds of
suicide-lemming squads.

What we have here isn't a failure to communicate, but an excessive
ability to communicate without the ability to differentiate between
what is real and what is merely perceived.

The world of virtuality has lifted war from the trenches into the
realm of the imagination.

___________________________________________________

Things are sure gettin' strange, ain't they

Harry

From The San Francisco Chronicle, 7/23/07:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/23/EDG6QQ4RMF1.DTL&fe
ed=rss.opinion

Wag the cat ... or something

Kathleen Parker, Washington Post Writers Group


JUST WHEN you thought the war in Iraq couldn't get any stranger, a
high-ranking al Qaeda figure who was first captured and then killed --
his body displayed on state-run TV -- turns out to have been a
fiction.

He didn't exist.

The apparently invented character called Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was
known as the head of the Islamic State of Iraq -- believed to be a
front group for al Qaeda.

He wasn't captured, as was reported previously.

He wasn't killed May 1 by hostile fire from U.S. forces, as reported
in a May 3 New York Times story.

He wasn't even real, according to the U.S. military.

All this we learn from a leading al Qaeda figure captured July 4 by
U.S. forces in Mosul.

Khalid Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, who in the interest
of economy will be referred to hereinafter as "Smitty," told
interrogators that Baghdadi was invented by Abu Ayyub al-Masri, aka
Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, hereinafter referred to as "Jimbo."

According to Smitty, Jimbo invented Baghdadi to create the impression
among Iraqis that al Qaeda is a nationalistic group in Iraq when, in
fact, the Islamic State was a Sunni Muslim insurgent group run by an
Egyptian, who hired an Iraqi actor to read statements from the
fictional al-Baghdadi.

Well, it's good to have all that straight.

If you're confused, feel the love.

Confusion is the coin of the kingdom in Iraq, an always-reliable
weapon made sharper by cyber-technology and alphabet-exhausting names.

Whatever else Baghdadi may or may not have done during his fake life
leading up to his fake capture and fake death, he has effectively
killed comedy.

How do you satirize satire?

How do you parody a parody?

How do you caricature caricature?

In a war theater of the absurd, where war is waged by actors
pretending to speak for fictional leaders, does the world die
laughing?

Given that al-Baghdadi wasn't real and his organization existed in
cyberspace, a cynic might be tempted to ask:

If there's no Islamic State of Iraq except in cyberspace, is there
also no al Qaeda?

If there's no al-Baghdadi, is there no Osama bin Laden?

But of course, there's an al-Qaeda.

We've all seen that videotape tape with the black-hooded guys hopping
through an obstacle exercise.

And of course there's a bin Laden -- or at least there was.

Maybe he's alive; maybe not.

If you can invent an organization and a leader in cyberspace, you can
surely keep a bin Laden alive in the hearts and minds of
suicide-lemming squads.

What we have here isn't a failure to communicate, but an excessive
ability to communicate without the ability to differentiate between
what is real and what is merely perceived.

The world of virtuality has lifted war from the trenches into the
realm of the imagination.

___________________________________________________

Things are sure gettin' strange, ain't they

Harry