Negroponte's Al-Zawahri Letter A Fake

It seems more and more likely that the Al Quaeda letter to al-Zarqawi from al-Zawahri that is being passed around the media is a fake. The full text of the letter was (unusually) posted online by Bush Spy Chief John Negroponte at his own office's Web site and is available here.

The letter is dated July 9 and was supposedly discovered back in April by US forces in Iraq. There has been no official US explanation about why it was not released earlier, or why it is suddenly being released now.

It's good timing for the Bush clan of course - an Al Quaeda letter detailing the need to take over Iraq as soon as the US withdraws, then build up a calipahate across the Middle East, just when the Bush team is warning of exactly that. Still, you wonder if cooler heads might not warn against disseminating the enemy's propaganda (if that's what it is) in such a blatantly deparate political manner.

The letter also complains about low morale among al-Zarqawi's followers and the incompetence of leaders in his terror network, suggesting it could be an attempt to undermine him.

Al Quaeda in a Iraq immediately disclaimed the letter as a fake.

A very suspiscious passage reads:

You might ask an important question: What drives me to broach these matters while we are in the din of war and the challenges of killing and combat?

Juan Cole thinks the letter is a forgery. He details key inconsistencies in the Arabic language version and concludes...

Most likely it is a black psy-ops operation of the US. But it could also come from Iran, since the mistakes are those a Shiite might make when pretending to be a Sunni. Or it could come from an Iraqi Shiite group attempting to manipulate the United States. Hmmm...

The other thing that struck me as odd about the Zawahiri letter was that at the end he raises the question of whether a non Iraqi should be leading the insurgency. This is odd for several reasons. Al Qaeda does not think in terms of nationality but of the umma or Muslim community. It reads to me like an attempt to undermine Zarqawi. And it is an insult.

Hard to see how anyone could "manipulate the United States" by telling them exactly what the Bush administration want them to believe... (oh, wait a minute!)

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists also says the letter is a fake. He cites a particular passage in the letter, as well as the fact the letter was signed with the name Abu Muhammad, as "conclusive evidence that the DNI was mistaken". In the key passage to which Aftergood refers, al-Zarqawi seems to urge the Iraq insurgent leader to send greetings to himself if visiting the Iraqi city of Falluja. Afterwood kindly suggests that the letter might have been written to someone other than Zarqawi.

There are some interesting comments on this at the Huffington Post. And if you are not the kind of person who is afraid to read the Socialist Worker, this article on how the US helped create Al-Zarqawi is worth a read (believe as much or as little as you want).