Are They Playing Games?

This is supposed to be the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. According to the US briefers his name is Abu Ayyub al-Masri [nom de bomb Abu Hamza al-Muhajir] and a “known associate” of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri, who is definitely the number two in the original al Qaeda.

Okay, why is an Egyptian wearing a thobe and a ghutra with a agal on his head? That says Saudi Arabia or the Gulf States, not Egypt. Most Egyptians who use the keffiyeh [headscarf] wear it as a turban, like al-Zawari, but usually those who wear a hat, just wear a skullcap.

Parts of this guy’s résumé sound stolen from the “work history” of Abu Khabab al-Masri, an al Qaeda bomb maker that Pakistan claims to have killed.

Of course, he’s definitely different than Abu Hamza al-Masri, who lost an eye and both hands fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, and now is in a British prison for preaching hate and violence.

It is also doubtful that he belongs to the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade which claims to be al Qaeda in Europe.

Having the same surname was probably why the CIA kidnapped Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen, and subjected him to “strenuous questioning” at undisclosed locations.

One thing all of these people have in common is they are Egyptians, because that’s what al Masri means in Arabic: “the Egyptian”.

I think some poor Saudi had his driver’s license photo stolen and the rest of this was concocted by psy-ops people to make the world think that the US knows what its doing.

By the way, this was based on doing a Google image search for a picture of al-Masri. When it kicked out thousands of hits, I switched to the regular mode and went with Abu al-Masri. It wasn’t difficult to figure out this was garbage.