United States Army claims to kill a terrorist leader... who is already dead??

I haven't seen this discussed here, and I just came across this information today while looking at other websites.

Apparently on Sunday, the United States Army claimed to have killed a high ranking leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq... but Al Qaeda announced a year ago that he had been killed, and some terrorism analysts are calling the US Army on their bluff...

CNN said the death was confirmed by a hand-written note from al-Tunisi that was found in the aftermath of an airstrike “in which he says he’s surrounded and desperate for help.” “The main thing here,” McIntyre reported, “is the U.S. military insists this was a dangerous terrorist” and it deals “a serious blow” to the al Qaeda leadership. Watch it:

thinkprogress.org...

If we put aside this theory, we are left with quite limited possibilities. It would seem that either Al-Qaida supporters were engaged in a deliberate misinformation campaign on their own password-protected chat forums, or else the U.S. military has potentially been the victim of questionable intelligence.

thinkprogress.org...

I should note that Yesterday Kohlman did confirm that Tunisi did in fact die recently, but I wonder why he changed his position so quickly, especially after he was so sure about it the day before. Is it possible that someone told him to shut up, or face some kind of consequences?

To me, this seems to be another propaganda campaign to encourage people that the war in Iraq is going much better than it is in reality. With falling support for both the war and the President, would it really be beyond the pale to suggest that the Administration (knowing that it would be going into a tough week; who likes the idea of vetoing a bill of health benefits for children?) decided to use a long dead enemy and claim a victory several months after it happened?

I am of the belief that such tactics have been used before (and are possibly being used here as well).

What do you guys think? Is Bush getting so desperate to hype the "good news" from Iraq that they would resort to this, or were terrorism analysts wrong a year ago?

Note: I realize that the website that I pulled this information off of is rather left-leaning, but that does not mean that they don't have a staff of crack researchers; notice that the article does not attack Bush, but the media as a whole for not fact-checking the claims of the military. I don't want to see this discussion turn into yet another Right Vs. Left debates.

reply to post by Mezzanine

but Al Qaeda announced a year ago that he had been killed

Oh yea, now there is a reliable source
This has been said before about another so called terrorist leader but the name escapes me at the moment.