You think he would be knitting cozies?

While the story of Nick Berg's death has been underplayed in the mainstream media (and many turning to the Internet and bloggers to get a fuller story), there has also been something else lacking in the news coverage. That is a fuller explanation and history of exactly who Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man identified by U.S. Intelligence as the one who held the knife and slaughtered Nick Berg, is and what he has done and is suspected of doing.
For example, on the back page of the Sunday Opinion section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, my local paper, (that's right, the back page), there was a reprint of an article titled Unspeakable brutality may restore U.S. resolve in Iraq, by Charles Paul Freund for the Los Angeles Times. Mr. Freund does do a good job of explaining the outrage of what happened to Nick Berg:

What al-Zarqawi's friends do is butcher Berg --- there's no other word for it. They don't use a sword or an ax; they use a knife. You can hear Berg screaming as al-Zarqawi's gang hacks at his neck and then pulls at his head until it comes off his body. They then hold his bleeding head in front of the camera. The tape is appalling not only for its utter bloodthirstiness but also for the total absence of simple human empathy.

However, in my opinion where the mainstream media, as demonstrated by the AJC, fails to explain the history of al-Zaqawi, as if he were just recently spewed forth by the Dark Lord.
To recap, al-Zaqawi was cited as the al-Queda leader behind the recently attempted chemical weapons attack in Jordon, which, if successful, could have resulted in the deaths of eighty thousand people.
al-Zaqawi was the al-Queda leader whose letter to Usama Bin Lauden was intercepted, where he wrote of the need for al-Queda to take action to stop the U.S. by fomenting a civil between the Sunnis and Shiites before the turnover of power at the end of June.
And what was al-Zaqawi up to before the start of the Iraqi war? Well, he was not herding camels. According to the now much maligned information that Colin Powell provided to the U.N. back before the war:

The nexus with al Queda, Powell said, originates with a branch headed by Abu Massab al-Zaqawi, a senior associate of Usama bin Laden. He said Zaqawi has a camp in the northeastern corner of Kurdish Iraq teaching terrorist operatives how to produce ricin and other extremely lethal chemicals. He said Zaqawi has received medical treatment in Baghdad and that there are also other Zaqawi brigades operating in Baghdad.

My question is this: Say President Bush was not resolute enough to have called Saddam Hussein to account. Whose head would al-Zaqawi be hacking off now and where would his chemical attacks be targeting?

Comments

[miasmo]

We could have taken out Zaqawi and his terrorist group on three seperate occasions before the war started. He was based in the Kurdish north, outside the control of Saddam. Bush chose not to take him out because it would have undercut part of his bogus rational for war - the non-existent connection between Al Queda and Saddam. If you want to blame someone for all the American deaths caused by Zaqawi, you can thank Bush. For his administration, terrorism seems to be merely an excuse to do stuff they wanted to do anyway.

[Blind Pig]

That's great logic. Don't blame the poor, misunderstood little terrorists, because it's not their fault they want to butcher Americans. Everything is the fault of the great Satan, President Bush: 9/11, Nick Berg, and the fact that the last two Matrix movies sucked.

[Dubliner]

The headline should be "Bush gives safe haven to Zaqawi". It is well known that Zaqawi was operating from Kurdistan (within Iraq), which was outside Saddam's control. Zaqawi is still doing his terrible deeds, when the US "control" the area. The Al Qaeda - Saddam connection is the biggest lie of this war and for that alone the Bush Administration should resign in toto. Anybody with an iota of understanding of the Arab world knew there was no connection.

It's tantamount to saying that the British were giving safe haven to the shoebomber. Wake up. Vote anyone but Bush.