| What the hell is an "al-Qaida official"? |
 An al-Qaida lieutenant in custody in Iraq has confessed to masterminding most of the car bombings in Baghdad, including the bloody 2003 assault on the U.N. headquarters in the capital, authorities said Monday. Sami Mohammed Ali Said al-Jaaf, also known as Abu Omar al-Kurdi, ``confessed to building approximately 75 percent of the car bombs used in attacks in Baghdad'' since the Iraq war began, according to the interim Iraqi prime minister's spokesman, Thaer al-Naqib.
| Take him out in the middle of a field, pop a stick of dynamite down his shorts, light the fuse and leave... |
A government statement said Al-Jaaf was taken into custody Jan. 15 and was responsible for 32 car bombings, including the bombing of the U.N. headquarters that killed the top U.N. envoy in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and 21 other people. The suspect, a top lieutenant of al-Qaida's Iraq leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, also built the car bomb used to attack a shrine in the Shiite holy city of Najaf that killed more than 85 people, including Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, in August 2003, the statement said. It said he also assembled the car bomb used in May to assassinate Izzadine Saleem, then president of the Iraqi Governing Council.
Two other militants linked to al-Zarqawi's terror group also have been arrested. They included the chief of al-Zarqawi's propaganda operations and one of the group's weapons suppliers, the government statement said. The government offered no evidence to support its claims, and the announcement followed a series of car bombings, kidnappings and assassinations of Iraqi security personnel, all of which have lowered public morale as the nation prepares for elections next weekend. Since June 28, when the interim Iraqi government took power, there have been 202 car bombings across Iraq, including 70 in the Baghdad area, according to an Associated Press tally. The attacks have killed 1,061 people and injured 2,753.
| Most of whom are Iraqis, someething the press doesn't often point out. |
Al-Zarqawi has been trying to incite Sunni Arabs against the Shiite majority, playing on Sunni fears that the elections will spell the end of their privileged position in Iraq. |