'Qaeda chief in Iraq' arrested. US Commanders: He's a strawman. (uh someone's. Not ours. No no. Not ours.)

A man calling himself the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been arrested in the north of the country, state television reported on Thursday quoting an interior ministry spokesman.

Major General Abdul Karim Khalaf told Al-Iraqiya that the detained man claimed he was Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, who is also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, but that investigations were under way to verify his identity.

"He was arrested in Wad al-Hajar region of Nineveh during a raid yesterday (Wednesday)," Khalaf said. "Now we are conducting more investigations to confirm whether he is Abu Hamza."

Khalaf said the arrest came after another man close to the detained individual said the Al-Qaeda chief was in a house in Wad al-Hajar area.

"The police then raided the area and captured the man who said 'I am Abu Hamza al-Muhajir'."

Muhajir, whose real name according to the US military is Abu Ayyub al-Masri, is an Egyptian national who was made the chief of the jihadist group in Iraq after the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a US air strike

in June 2006.

Last year, there had been reports that Masri had been killed, but they were later denied.

In April, Muhajir announced a campaign in which the group will "offer the head of an American" as a gift to US President George W. Bush, in a speech monitored by the SITE Intelligence Group.

... Al-Qaeda in Iraq has in the past said it is led by an Iraqi, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, but US commanders say he is a "cyber invention" and that he is a straw man invented to put an Iraqi face on a terrorist group led by foreigners who infiltrated Iraq to sow chaos and undermine the US-backed government. - ap

Looks very American. Without the head piece he could be Chevy Chase.

This is a new twist: US commanders now admit that Al-Qadea is a scam (or at least one leader in Iraq), but blame it on Iran or someone else. Since 9/11, however, many believe the CIA along with Israel and Pakistan have been sowing chaos under the banner of Al-Qaeda to be sure the US has a reason to stay in Iraq so we get the military bases for Middle East "stability" and the oil. You'll find this point of view on prisonplanet, infoclearinghouse and so on.  No one denies the CIA Al-Qaeda connection:

Bin Laden, ... Throughout the 80s ...was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.

But the current Pentagon story is that Bin Laden turned against the US after we trained and supplied him. Did he really? When? Why? Why did the CIA withhold Al-Qaeda interrogation tapes from the 9/11 Commission?  Isn't is beyond believable that the plane into building exercise the CIA /NRO was conducting on 9/11 was just a bizarre coincidence?

With good  plausible deny ability you fall back closer and closer to the truth, but only when you must.