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Abu Ayyub al-Masri
By John
May have been waxed by some rival bad guys. Reuters reports:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq was killed on Tuesday in a fight between insurgents north of Baghdad, the Interior Ministry spokesman said, but the U.S. military said it could not confirm the report.Red on red kill. Interesting. If it's true. There's been some false alarms on this guy in the past, and the report did come out of the Iraqi interior, not the MNF. Anyway, I'd head over to Roggio's on this (or the Worldwide Standard), he'll probably get deeper into it than I can .
There has been growing friction between Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups over al Qaeda's indiscriminate killing of civilians and its imposition of an austere brand of Islam in the areas where it holds sway.If true, the death of Abu Ayyub al-Masri would signal a deepening split at a time when the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is trying to woo some insurgent groups into the political process.
Reuters cavets...and caveats....and caveats:
In February, Interior Ministry sources said Masri had been wounded in a gunbattle north of Baghdad, but those reports turned out not to be true. There were also reports in October that he had been killed, which again were incorrect.Okay, I understand this isn't going to end the violence, hell...it probably won't even dent it. But is it so much to ask that Reuters gets into the meat of this budding terrorist mob war, instead of just using the opportunity to repeat the tired civil war meme?Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, assumed the leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq after Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. air strike in June 2006.
Officials had hoped the demise of Zarqawi might have weakened al Qaeda, but he was quickly replaced by Masri and the group's attacks continued unabated.
U.S. and Iraqi officials accuse al Qaeda of trying to tip Iraq into full-scale civil war between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs with a campaign of spectacular car bombs attacks that have killed thousands.
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Comments
Awaiting confirmation of this mugg's demise. However, savages bombing civilians isn't a civil war. It happens all the time in Israel when Palestinians bomb civilians there.
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They have to caveat like mad because a headline like "rebels killing their own" would be a clear sign that Reuters hasn't been straight with the public and Reuters needs time to get "onside" with this one. Can you imagine what a "Tet in reverse" would do to the naysayers in the media?
As out of position as they are now, Reuters would suffer a massive loss of credibility and profitability if they were to permit the idea to suddenly burst in public that we might be winning this thing. So they need to caveat and shift their storytelling so that they can be seen as accurately reporting the bad side and then the surprise turnaround in a believable enough fashion to preserve their paychecks.