The al Qaeda Bogeyman

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11:16 AM, Dec 14, 2007 • By MICHAEL GOLDFARB

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Cliff May catches the New York Times again quoting from the "prominent Sunni extremist, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi." As Aaron MacLean wrote here in September:

As has been documented by Michael Gordon in the New York Times and covered by Frederick W. Kagan in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, U.S. intelligence is largely persuaded that Abu Omar al-Baghdadi is a fiction invented to obscure the largely foreign character of al Qaeda in Iraq's leadership cadre.

We know the Times is disinclined to believe anything the military has to say about Iraq, but one would think that after their own reporter exposed al-Baghdadi as nothing more than an al Qaeda bogeyman, the paper might offer some kind of caveat when reporting his threats.