Zarqawi Interrupted

Rare good news from Iraq: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has reportedly been killed, this time for real. According to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, he and seven aides died in a U.S. airstrike, apparently "the result of intelligence reports provided to Iraqi security forces by residents in the area."

Comments

[Ventifact]

That's welcome news.

[thoreau]

Let's clone him so we can kill him again.

[Jared]

First Haditha, now DOMA fails.. "October Suprise" v 2.0 anyone?

Nah, I kid, but you know its gonna be said

[Bramblyspam]

Hopefully this is true, but I want them to have positive ID on an actual body before I'll take this report at face value.

Remember "Chemical Ali"? In the early days of the war, there were multiple reports of him being killed in various air strikes. At one point, officials even claimed that his body had been found. Later on, he was captured - alive and well.

Iraqi resistance will of course continue unabated, but Zarqawi's group is/was particularly odious. If its influence on Iraq's future is lessened, that is indeed good news.

So, if this report holds up... who will the pentagon folks name as our next archvillain? They have to have some demon-figure to pump up, no?

[Naive Fool]

Ah, maybe this will result in a reduction of violence in Iraq.

[chewy]

Juan Cole's week just gets worse and worse, first no Yale, now he's gotta hear about this over and over. According to Cole, Zarqawi doesn't even exist. I suppose he's sort of right now.

[Randolph Carter]

Now that this is done, we can move on and attack Iran! Huzzah!

Seriously - Fox news is getting rather silly (shilly?) - I just heard Brit Hume say, "I've heard, and I think I agree with this, that Iraq isn't getting worse; it's getting more intense. We may see that intensity rise over the next few weeks."

huh?

[Bing]

"Nouri al-Maliki"

Isn't that the thing to say on a bright Hawaiian Christmas day?

[kwais]

I was hoping the Iraqis were going to get the guy themselves. Or that I was going to get him and attempt to collect on the 25 million.

[Ruthless]

"Nah, I kid, but you know its gonna be said"
Jared,
It does seem like wag the dog, doesn't it?

[kwais]

Has anybody read Al Q's response?

It is mostly jibberish. I was half expecting to read "Yeah, we don't care, we were about to fire the dude anyways"

And that maybe what they were really trying to say in between statements of how great God is and such. I couldn't read through the whole thing. I wonder if anyone does. I wonder if they could hire someone that could actually write they would think through what they are writing and realize it doesn't make much sense.

[biologist]

hopefully the residents in the area that provided the intelligence weren't also taken out by our precision airstrikes

[Jim Bob]

And the libertarians at lewrockwell.com and antiwar.com mourn the death of this courageous freedom fighter. The left-libertarians see it as merely another ploy by Dick Cheney to take over the oil fields of Iraq. Long live the big tent.

[Bruce]

This is just another trick by Mossad to shore American support for the Israeli-directed invasion of Iraq. Mossad's first trick was 9/11.

http://www.davidduke.com/index_print.php?p=350

[quasibill]

So we've turned another corner?

Is it the fourth one yet?

[the other Mark]

Sez AQ: "The death of our leaders is life for us. It will only increase our persistence in continuing holy war so that the word of God will be supreme."

WTF? The death of our leaders makes us stronger?

[thoreau]

Quasibill-

Corners need not be 90 degree angles. Iraq might be an octagon or something. We could have quite a few corners to turn before we arrive back where we started.

[Adam W.]

Bruce-
David Duke? DAVID DUKE??? He's not credible (it's odd though-when you look at those opposed to the war, you get some strange bedfellows-Duke's still an @SShole though).

[Iron Lungfish]

"According to Cole, Zarqawi doesn't even exist."

Uh, what? No, not at all. According to Cole, Zarqawi's importance within the insurgency has been greatly exaggerated by the U.S. - and the military seems to agree with him.

[Adam W.]

Oh yeah-I opposed this war, still can't stand Bush, but zarqawi was a scumbag-good riddance.

[Shem]

Hopefully this is true, but I want them to have positive ID on an actual body before I'll take this report at face value.

Agreed. Our government doesn't have the best track record when it comes to killing this guy.

[Iron Lungfish]

Zarqawi has never been the linchpin of the insurgency, and neither it nor the civil war will end with him. But I'm willing to pretend this has been a Critical Victory in the Global War On Everything if George Bush agrees to declare victory and go home.

[Mark]

Corners need not be 90 degree angles. Iraq might be an octagon or something. We could have quite a few corners to turn before we arrive back where we started.

Thoreau,

I like your answer. It's very wise. It's the sort of thing that I can imagine an old chinese man saying.

[Uri ben Tzvi]

An old Chinese man would never say "an octagon or something," but I agree, Thoreau is eloquent.

[Eric]

Things were bad, but now they're good. Forever!

[joe]

Best case scenario: the informants behind this are active participants in the nationalist insurgency, disgusted by Zarqawi for killing their civilian countrymen, and this represents an opportunity to open dialogue with them about joining the political process. Here's hoping.

But, hey, a good thing regardless.

[SR]

"Remember 'Chemical Ali'?"

I think Slate had a compilation of all the al-Qaeda and Iraqi government figures that the US has announced killing/capturing multiple times. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is another classic one -- the Pakistanis killed him about a year before they arrested him.

[Jesse Walker]

And the libertarians at lewrockwell.com and antiwar.com mourn the death of this courageous freedom fighter.

I was curious to see if this was true, so I visited both sites. LRC had just one post on the topic, predicting that this probably won't make much difference for the war; Antiwar had a news headline but no commentary.

So I'm guessing this comment was just a witless joke.

[R C Dean]

SR - I think you will find that the US never announced killing or capturing most of the people on that list.

What you will find is the media (mis)reporting either rumors or hedged/conditional US statements.

There's a difference you know.

Zarqawi has never been the linchpin of the insurgency, and neither it nor the civil war will end with him.

The insurgency will certainly carry on without him. There is not and never has been a civil war by any normal definition of that term.

[John DeWitt]

Let's clone him so we can kill him again.

Oh, I think the Iraqis and the newsies will probably take care of that for you. There'll be another Horrible Satanic Villain in the news by the end of the week. But in the meantime, rejoice! Emmanuel Goldstein is dead, for the moment.

[Mark]

There'll be another Horrible Satanic Villain

The UK had the best bad guy by so far it hurt! Can you remember Abul Hamza with the hook and the glass eye? He was the straight up, bona fide, Islamic Dr Evil.

Now we just have run of the mill beardy weirdys. Boooorrrrriiinnnngggg.

Anyway, who cares about Iraq. Wayne Rooney is back in the England Squad!!! WOOOOHHHHHOOOO!!!!

[SR]

"I think you will find that the US never announced killing or capturing most of the people on that list. What you will find is the media (mis)reporting either rumors or hedged/conditional US statements. There's a difference you know."

Not with the current state of spin there isn't.

[Dave W.]

But, hey, a good thing regardless.

depends on how many innocent, collateral deaths there were, joe, especially since this probably isn't going to make an appreciable difference in the amount of dollars the US throws tax money at the whole Iraq thing.

Do you know how many collaterals -- can't haven't seen that number in the news accounts I have read?

[joe]

Dave W,

I've seen a total of six killed. Which would be about a day's work for the terrorists that were killed.

Unlike all the other good news for Iraq, this actually represents a victory against the real enemy, Al Qaeda.

But it is right to remember the innocents.

[implacable]

Zarqawi's death is welcome news. It is my fervent hope that when this issue of a sick cur's ass gets to "Paradise" that one of the "seventy-five virgins" lifts her leg and pisses in his face.
My one regret is that he could not have been taken alive, buttered with hog fat, and thrown to a pack of wild dogs to be devoured...thereby not only desecrating his body and soul in his own eyes and those of his followers, but inflicting on him a small portion of the pain that he so enjoyed inflicting on others with that knife of his.

Other than that, I'd like to say that it's about time.

[Dave W.]

Six isn't bad at all.

From what I can glean, the ratio is running 1 coalition military death for every 20 Iraqi civilian deaths.

Of course, we would only really get a fair count of the human costs if we knew the casualities from all the airstrikes aimed at Zarqawi that did not get him.

Generally speaking, if an invading army is only willing to experience one death of its own per 20 civilian deaths in the occupied land, then they don't deserve to be there. It makes it too easy to devalue life. There is a strain of that in this hoo-ahh party.

[SmokingPenguin]

Anyway, who cares about Iraq. Wayne Rooney is back in the England Squad!!! WOOOOHHHHHOOOO!!!!

You should care, Mark. Al Qaeda operatives are now making sure that Rooney's foot injury will recur. They are also working on cutting certain tendons in Beckham's leg so that any ball he kicks will be as straight as Senator Inhofe family's sexual preferences.

[Ventifact]

Also killed besides Zarqawi: seven of his aides and "six other people [...] including one woman and one child." It's interesting that I could find info on the civilian deaths on FoxNews but not CNN.

[Seamus]

I was curious to see if this was true, so I visited both sites.

You were curious? Anyone familiar with those sites would have known, even before checking, that it was "just a witless joke."

[Seamus]

My one regret is that he could not have been taken alive, buttered with hog fat, and thrown to a pack of wild dogs to be devoured

I hate it when that doesn't happen.