We Got Him!!

Yes. Yes! YES!!

BAGHDAD, June 8 –Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the mastermind behind hundreds of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq, was killed Wednesday evening by an air strike northwest of Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday.

Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born high-school dropout whose leadership of the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq made him the most wanted man in the country, was killed along with seven aides near the city of Baqubah, the officials said.

That is truly good news. Sure, it’s not his head on a stick outside the Iraqi government building, which would have been just as good, but it’ll do.

It doesn’t mean that terrorism inside Iraq is simply going to melt away, but it does mean that it’s suffered another major setback and it is a significant symbolic victory for the good guys. Zarqawi carried a lot of terrorist know-how in his head and that’s all gone now (Call it a very specific form of “brain drain” where the brain in question doesn’t go to another country, it just ends up decorating some rubble in the town of Hibhib). I don’t know exactly how long it takes to train a senior al-Qaida leader, but I can’t imagine there are too many more of them around. The money that flowed because of him, personally, is gone also and that’s not a trivial amount to a terrorist organization that is already feeling the pinch.

Lastly, it’s a definite sign of how well our military and Iraq’s new security agencies are working together, which is the part of the story I’d like to hear more about. I’d expect that as the Iraqi police and military continue their training and continue to have these successes, their cohesion and camraderie is going to continue to increase. The camraderie, especially, is important. Cops and soldiers, more than any other profession, need to know that they are part of a unit – whether that unit is a platoon, a brigade, a patrol shift, or what have you. A major success like this, where Iraqi professionals can claim large credit for developing the intelligence and calling in the American air strike (assuming that’s true, something the article implies, but does not say directly), gives them something around which to rally and something for which their leaders and ours can publicly praise them. Should we find out that the Iraqi military and/or police had a major hand in developing that intelligence, our President would be well-advised to talk them up as much as possible. That’s going to make them more confident and will drive more recruits to their front door. Whoever decides to replace Zarqawi should keep that in mind.

I expect to hear quite a few stories today, though, about how this victory doesn’t mean much of anything and that, if anything, this will only increase terrorism in Iraq because of retribution of some such. Then again, I’m a horrible pessimist when it comes to expecting positive reporting about the War on Terror.

The Anchoress has the best round up of reactions this morning. Keep checking with her.

(Updated for more goodies)

UPDATE: The Lefty Blogs Say: “That’s nice, but…”. Enthusiasm is…considerably muted.

UPDATE AGAIN: It occurred to me this afternoon that the last time I thought seriously about Zarqawi, I was laughing my rear end off because he, the fearsome and experienced warrior, couldn’t quite get the hang of operating a standard-issue machine gun.

Do you think his first words, upon waking in paradise were, “What do you mean, raisins…?” That thought, folks, is gut-bustingly funny.

UPDATE THE THIRD: Allah is the Mixmaster General. Says Michelle Malkin:

Yeah, baby.

F-16s + Beastie Boys = Crazy Delicious.

Someone should have told ol’ Zarqawi to watch that downbeat. It’s a killer.

UPDATE IV: It appears that we are again the villain, according Bernie, who runs a blog called Planck’s Constant. Why, this time?

Well, we dropped bombs on “innocent villagers drinking tea”, killed a “spiritual adviser” and a “community outreach organizer”, and “adversely impacted” future excavations in a general area known for its “historic digs”.

It seems that Bernie can’t bring himself to type Zarqawi’s name, relying on quoted comments fom other blogs to do that. I didn’t link to him because, from the look of his blog, he’s a link whore (considering he can’t seem to report the death of a murderer, yet he has a pro-war blogroll on his site) and folks like that don’t deserve the visits they get. Especially when the writing is as intellectually vapid as what’s in that post.

UPDATE FIVE: Well, well, well. It appears that Zarqawi didn’t die right away. Captain Ed brings us the report that Zarqawi lingered long enough to be put on a stretcher and to recognize who killed him.

Major-General Bill Caldwell said that he had learnt early yesterday that al-Zarqawi had survived the initial airstrikes on his two-floor breeze-block hideout.

“We did, in fact, see him alive,” General Caldwell said. “He mumbled something but it was indistinguishable and it was very short.”

US medics tried to save the life of the most-wanted man in Iraq, but it was too late, General Caldwell added. “Zarqawi attempted to sort of turn away off the stretcher,” he said. “Everybody resecured him back on to the stretcher but he died almost immediately from the wounds he’d received.

“He obviously had some kind of visual recognition of who they were because he attempted to roll off the stretcher, as I am told, and get away, realising it was the US military.”

I hope that there were a couple of Iraqi soldiers around in their nice, crisp uniforms there as well. Nothing could have been better than for his last thought on Earth to be that he was killed by Iraqis and Americans working together.

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Category: Fighting the Islamists