Comment: Although this article appeared in 2007, it is quite apt today as the Islamic State is being touted as the next big terrorist organization that requires U.S. intervention all around the world to combat.
For more than a year, the leader of one the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi named Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi.
As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, an organization publicly backed by Al Qaeda, Baghdadi issued a steady stream of incendiary pronouncements. Despite claims by Iraqi officials that he had been killed in May, Baghdadi appeared to have persevered unscathed.
On Wednesday, a senior American military spokesman provided a new explanation for Baghdadi's ability to escape attack: He never existed.
Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, the chief American military spokesman, said the elusive Baghdadi was actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor named Abu Adullah al-Naima.
Comment: Fascinating, isn't it?
It's as if they had a plot line involving an 'Islamic State led by al-Baghdadi' waiting in the wings, but decided against using it at the time.
7 years later, an 'Islamic State led by al-Baghdadi' is justifying US intervention from Morocco to Pakistan.
Is this one equally fictional?
There are real people doing really horrible things in Muslim countries - most of them from Europe and Saudi Arabia - but the idea that they're part of some 'cohesive enemy threatening Western civilization' is clearly fictional.
Remember what former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said before his untimely death: 'al Qaeda' was a database of Western intelligence informants...