The Zarqawi Connection. posted by Richard Seymour

According to several military analysts working both inside and outside of government, the Bush administration’s oft-repeated claim that militant leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is the direct link between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein does not ring true.
Al- Zarqawi, a Jordanian who heads a group that reportedly claimed responsibility Tuesday for killing a Bulgarian worker held captive in Iraq, appears to be one of many leaders within the decentralized, global Islamic extremist movement. The various groups often work in competition with Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network for recruits and funding.
The analysts also suggest that, contrary to other Bush administration assertions, Al-Zarqawi’s religious beliefs, combat tactics and operational goals were never consistent with Hussein’s, nor are they in accord with those of most Iraqis currently fighting against the ongoing US-led military occupation.
Ties to Al-Qaeda Questioned
Speaking Monday in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Bush once again suggested that the rigidly Islamic fundamentalist Al-Qaeda and Saddam’s secular Ba’athist regime had an operational relationship. When asked about the president’s remarks, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan specifically referred to Al-Zarqawi as the link between the two, calling him a "senior al-Qaeda" member in Iraq. Again on Wednesday, the president said Al-Zarqawi "gets instructions from Al-Qaeda."
However, a "high-ranking US military official" anonymously told Agence France-Presse, "Saddam did not have any love for non-Iraqi Arabs... We have found no evidence he cooperated with Zarqawi himself."
Knight Ridder reports that US intelligence officials refer to Al-Zarqawi as more of a distant associate of Al-Qaeda who may share some of its goals, but does not receive orders and funding from bin Laden.
Jason Burke, a British journalist and author of the recent book Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror, goes further in disputing Bush’s claims.
Citing reports by German intelligence officials, who investigated a terrorist cell organized by Al-Zarqawi there in the late 1990s, Burke argues that Al-Zarqawi is not an Al-Qaeda leader or even a sworn member -- nor was he in any way a compatriot of Saddam.
"Al-Zarqawi is not an Al-Qaeda operative," Burke emphatically wrote in the UK paper The Observer in March. "If there is a link between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein he is not it."
Burke acknowledges that Al-Zarqawi, like bin Laden and many other young Muslim men, journeyed to Afghanistan in the 1980s to join the US-funded fight against the Soviet Union’s occupation of that country. But Burke contends that Al-Zarqawi led a group of Jordanian fighters separate from bin Laden’s mujahideen group...