Shlok Vaidya

Zarqawi Is Dead

In one of the most significant developments in Iraq since the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Jordanian Zarqawi was killed in a bombing raid on Wednesday in a U-S.-Iraqi operation helped by tip-offs from Iraqis and Jordanian intelligence. 

That’s good news purely from a propaganda perspective. The bad news is that this doesn’t matter – Zarqawi already accomplished all he could – he transferred the center of gravity (by force) to Shia and Sunni leaders. Proof of this will come as we will be seeing no downtick (maybe even an uptick) in the amount and/or scale of attacks in Iraq after his death.

Tony Blair once again demonstrates his bizarre position as a middle man between America and the rest of the world – he gets our failed efforts, but does not take the next step, as evidenced by this quote –

Asked if Zarqawi’s death would make a difference to a monthly death toll of about 1,200 in Baghdad alone, Blair told reporters: “This isn’t going to change with the death of al-Zarqawi. We should not have any illusions about this.” But he added that if al-Qaeda was defeated in Iraq it would be defeated everywhere. 

NOTE: Something isn’t clicking. (It may just be the fog of war). We did not have a decent picture of Zarqawi prior to his last video release, and he knew it. The sheer hubris of his last video (daylight, no mask, and more interestingly he was surrounded by masked individuals). Arguably – someone in AQ, or Zarqawi himself set the kitchen timer when they released the video to prove the point made in the first paragraph of this post. But this is pure speculation and we will probably never know what happened behind the scenes.

-Shlok
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08. June 2006 by Shlok Vaidya
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