“Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, who was traveling with Musharraf, described Rabia as either No. 3 or No. 5 in the Al Qaeda hierarchy,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “In Washington, a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official agreed that Rabia was responsible for international planning, including operations against the United States.”

The BBC reported last September that Abu Hamza Rabia was connected to Abu Faraj al-Libbi, “said to have taken over as third in command of al Qa’eda when his mentor, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” reported the Telegraph at the time. In May of this year, the “Al-Qaeda kingpin” Abu Faraj al-Libbi was captured n Mardan, a town 30 miles north of Peshawar, in northwestern Pakistan, and soon it was revealed that he wasn’t “either No. 3 or No. 5 in the Al Qaeda hierarchy” but rather “a middle-ranker derided by one source as ‘among the flotsam and jetsam’ of the organization,” according to the Times Online. In other words, since Rabia is connected to al-Libbi, and the latter is now considered “flotsam and jetsam,” a “middle-ranker,” there is a more than fifty-fifty chance Rabia shares there attributes. In short, he is a nobody, as most al-Qaeda operatives either captured or killed by the U.S. and their loyal proxy Pakistan turn out to be because al-Qaeda, as described by the Bushcons and the corporate media, is largely smoke and mirrors.

As Paul Joseph Watson wrote on May 18, the alleged capture of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, essentially a nobody (or probably a dirt farmer or cab driver like most “al-Qaeda” operatives captured and flown from country to country in CIA jets and tortured), “becomes a justification that the war on terror is real in the first place, becomes justification that Bush is winning the war on terror and that sacrificing our rights is working, becomes justification for renewing the Patriot Act and becomes part of the script they’re working on for when they capture their friend Osama.” Watson also notes that European intelligence experts believe the man held by the United States is not al-Qaeda’s third in command (said to be instead Anas al-Liby who was indicted for an “operational role” in the bombings of two American embassies in East Africa in August 1998) but a “middle-ranker.” Since Abu Hamza Rabia was allegedly blown up by a CIA missile, the U.S. will not be subjected to this embarrassing confusion.

Of course, Osama will never be killed (not even the CIA can kill a man already dead and buried) and Osama and al-Zarqawi (killed years ago) will live on as our Emmanuel Goldsteins, dragged out at the appropriate times for two-minute hate sessions. Abu Hamza Rabia, due to his connection to al-Libbi, is basically a nobody, “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the fake “al-Qaeda” organization, but of course that does not matter since the message was sent—the CIA posse got their man, never mind independent confirmation (or for that matter a body to show off), the corporate media faithfully repeats the Bushcon line (we will “smoke ‘em out”), and the American people will have at least a momentary glimmer of hope that we are making headway in the “war on terror” promised to last a couple generations, at least a hundred years, to the glee of Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, Bechtel, and of course the Israeli and Pentagon Zionists who want the Muslim and Arab Middle East sliced up into bite-sized pieces.