Second, “61 rebels linked to al-Qaeda through Iraqi frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi” were supposedly captured near Fallujah, according to the Pentagon. “US forces have repeatedly carried out sweeps in Al-Anbar, a Sunni-majority province, where foreign fighters are said to have crossed over from Syria.” Recall last May the Associated Press reporting “Iraq’s most notorious terrorist group” held a meeting in Syria with Iran participating, a fairy tale of absurd dimension since Iran is predominately a Shia nation and Shi’ites are considered infidels by the Sunni al-Zarqawi, and Syria is a secular country wary of religious fanatics. “If al-Zarqawi and his group win in Iraq, they will turn the region into a fundamentalist nightmare,” declared Syrian political analyst Imad Fawzi al-Shueibi, who foolishly buys into the al-Zarqawi myth.

Now “U.S. officials tell CBS News that intelligence has picked up reports that al Qaeda in Iraq is planning what one source calls the ‘Big Bang,’ a spectacular terrorist attack in Iraq against either a single high-profile target or multiple targets simultaneously…. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi seems to be betting that another big bang would push the country over the brink,” a situation that dovetails nicely with the Straussian neocon plan to foment “civil war” in Iraq and ultimately break the country up into three Bantustans based on religion and ethnicity.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi does not “exists as such. He’s simply an invention by the occupiers to divide the people,” Sheikh Jawad al-Kalesi, the imam of the al-Kadhimiyah mosque in Baghdad, told Le Monde last September. “His family in Jordan even held a ceremony after his death. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is therefore a ploy used by the Americans, an excuse to continue the occupation,” and now as an excuse to break Iraq into three pieces.

Meanwhile, our wonderful corporate media, itself a Pentagon asset, has fed us all manner of al-Zarqawi nonsense over the last couple years, even though al-Zarqawi “tapes” released over the internet feature al-Zarqawis with different voices and voices sans Jordanian accent. Like the fake Osama, the fake al-Zarqawi, in the Nick Berg beheading video, wears a gold ring, forbidden by Islam, and has two perfectly good legs, although we are told Abu lost a leg fighting the jihad in Afghanistan.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is “a creation of US foreign policy, a myth, a fable, the most convenient man in Bush’s alleged ‘war on terror.’ Much like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy ‘Zarqawi’ is a mythical creature that leaves gifts for those in position to take advantage of them. He is a manufactured enemy, built to specifications, and his presence ensures outrage and an escalation of the conflict,” writes John Doraemi for al-Jazeera. As such, the al-Zarqawi myth is now serving the Straussian neocon plan to balkanize Iraq.

As Hitler realized, “in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility.” Joseph Goebbels, following the example of the British, believed once the Big Lie is rolled out, the government must “stick to it” at all cost. During the Second World War the Unites States Office of Strategic Services wrote the following in Hitler’s psychological profile: “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” Bush’s Straussian neocons employ the Big Lie and, in fact, it comes naturally to them as Machiavellian schemers, followers of Leo Strauss’ maxim that the public must be deceived.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi embodies the Big Lie and the Straussian neocons will continue to “stick to it” because “if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.” Millions of Americans now believe al-Zarqawi is a real person, although there is absolutely no evidence of this. As an invincible force, al-Zarqawi will be used to explain the Iraqi “civil war,” now well underway, and the corporate media, ever the slavish lapdog of the government, will keep hammering the message that the ethereal al-Zarqawi is the “number One Enemy of the People,” as Emmanuel Goldstein was in Orwell’s 1984.