Where is Bob Saget when you need him?

The US military revealed a number of video bloopers which were discovered in a raid on an alleged Al Qaeda safe house in Yousseifia. Yousseifia is a small village south of the capital, in an area U.S. military planners say is being used as a staging ground for insurgent operations in Baghdad.




In these video outtakes Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, self-proclaimed leader of Al Qaeda's branch in Iraq, is shown having difficulty which a fully automatic machine gun. He seems unable to switch the gun to full automatic fire, and at one point seems to jam the gun. This prompts assistance from a fellow terrorist who shows al-Zarqawi how to remedy the problem.

In another scene shown to reporters by the U.S. military today, al-Zarqawi's deputy scalds his hand by grabbing the burning-hot metal barrel of a just-fired machine-gun in a classic military no-no that was edited out of the 34-minute propaganda video that found its way onto the Internet and Arab-language television last week.




Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch (Pictured above), spokesman for U.S.-led forces in Iraq, offered the video presentation to reporters in an effort to belittle the reputation of the feared Al Queda leader. Lynch told reporters, "What you saw on the Internet is what he wanted the world to see: 'Look at me, I'm a capable leader of a capable organization.”

Ah … Rick … if knowledge of firearms is the yardstick we are going to measure our leadership against, we might want to rethink our own.