The Nasar ommission

Someone from a national media outlet has finally called out the WaPo for their curious ommission in a recent story about Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, discussed previously here. That someone was Daily Standard reporter Dan Darling.

Darling's piece, entitled "An Ommission of Note", expands upon a Jamestown Foundation report on Nasar that better explains his previous involvement with Iraq, something the Post evidently didn't think important enough to mention:

He was also a member of the higher military command of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement that was established in Baghdad after the Syrian Brothers fled from their country.

The Jamestown story goes on to chronicle Nasar's break from Hussein's regime and his fervent belief that al-Qaeda cells should remain independent of states as much as possible.

Surely the WaPo didn't believe Nasar was philosophically aligned with Saddam, but it's possible they concluded that if they tried to explain why he wasn't it would force them to also explain why Saddam was trying to manipulate Islamist organizations to begin with. Such a revelation treads close to a casus belli argument promoted by Bush, ie, if he can manipulate one group, why not another?

Darling mentions Nasar's 1600 page terror manifesto and references an analysis done by a Dr. Reuven Paz, who indicated the red headed Syrian was in favor of a nuclear Iran and North Korea to eventually assist the Islamists--in effect backing a small devil to defeat the big one.

Are you beginning to see why the WaPo might have ommitted some of this? Not only does it tend to solidify Bush's "Axis of Evil" principle, it suggests that despite differences with secular regimes, an al Qaeda operating under a Nasar blueprint was clearly capable of working with them if it meant obtaining the desired ordnance. Here's Dr. Paz again:

Al-Suri [Nasar] does not see much benefit from the guerrilla warfare waged against the U.S. by al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Hence, "the ultimate choice is the destruction of the United States by operations of strategic symmetry through weapons of mass destruction, namely nuclear, chemical, or biological means, if the mujahideen can achieve it with the help of those who possess them or through buying them."

The left would stop and remind us that Saddam didn't have any WMDs and therefore couldn't have been a player in Nasar's game. Thing is, we still don't conclusively know what happened to his programs or stocks. UN Inpsectors were pretty certain he possessed various procribed weapons--after all they destroyed some of them.

BUSTED 6/4/06

The roundup of the Canadian terror ring seems to be an endorsement for the NSA spy thing. It would also appear that Nasar's manifesto is not being followed, as he seemed to be preaching a more autonomous approach (independent group theory) rather than the network approach. Perhaps after this defeat al-Qaeda will decide to follow Nasar's guidelines more closely.