Zarqawi Zapped (Updated Yet Again)

By now, you’ve heard the good news: Al-​​Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-​​Zarqawi has been killed by U.S. forces. (Here is the video of the F-​​16 strikes that knocked him off. And here is footage from the after­math.) Below are a few links, to pro­vide a lit­tle con­text:

* Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. mil­i­tary com­man­der in Iraq, said that “tips and intel­li­gence… from Iraqi senior lead­ers from [Zarqawi’s] net­work led forces” to him. (The printed ver­sion of Casey’s state­ment reads a lit­tle dif­fer­ently.)
* John Robb looks at Zarqawi’s tenure as a “vio­lence cap­i­tal­ist.” (Here is a list of the big attacks claimed by his fol­low­ers.)
* The Counterterrorism Blog high­lights the role of Task Force 145, the com­bi­na­tion of SEAL and Delta Force units, in Zarqawi’s take-​​down. (William Arkin has a bit more.)
* Juan Cole looks at the split between Zarqawi and “the main arm of the guer­rilla resis­tance.“
* Chris Allbritton, strik­ing an unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally hope­ful tone, says, Zarqawi’s elim­i­na­tion “indi­cates that bring­ing the Sunnis into the gov­ern­ment seems to [have] worked.” (More here.)
* CNN won­ders if Zarqawi’s recent video helped nail him.
* Dexter Filkins says “it could pos­si­bly set off a bloody strug­gle within the orga­ni­za­tion to suc­ceed [Zarqawi], [although] the insur­gency and sec­tar­ian war he helped ignite in Iraq will carry on with­out him.“
* Smash asks if Abu Abdulrahman al-​​Iraqi is tak­ing Zarqawi’s place. (Thanks to Smash for the pic, too.)
* Foreign Policy offers up its “pro­file of a killer.“
* Winds: Is Zarqawi Iraq’s “Jeb Stuart”?
* Barnett: “Zarqawi’s ele­va­tion to ‘mas­ter ter­ror­ist’ was use­ful to our pur­poses.“
* Blogging Baghdad: “Maliki’s big chance.“
* Stratfor: “Al-​​Zarqawi was attacked by two F-​​16s, each of which dropped a 500-​​pound bomb, not by a Hellfire mis­sile launched from a Predator drone. Predators are dual intel­li­gence gathering/​assassination tools. Pairs of F-​​16s are more likely to be used when there is pre-​​existing intel­li­gence that results in a task­ing. U.S. forces selected their weapon very care­fully to be low on frag­men­ta­tion or fire to max­i­mize the chances of the quick recov­ery of an eas­ily iden­ti­fi­able corpse. Al-​​Zarqawi was not found, he was sold out. A polit­i­cal deal was made, and the Sunnis have deliv­ered on their end.“
* Kaplan: “If there’s any legit­i­macy to the new Iraqi gov­ern­ment, now’s the time it might take trac­tion.“
* Ackerman: “Zarqawi’s death may in fact be a bad thing.“
* Zarqawi’s brother-​​in-​​law arrested live, on TV.

June 8th, 2006 | War Update | 193261 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/06/08/zarqawi-zapped-updated-yet-again/Zarqawi+Zapped+%28Updated+Yet+Again%292006-06-08+16%3A51%3A40david_axe You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.