Political Crossfire Forums

[John Galt]

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi Killed in Air Raid

By PATRICK QUINN

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida leader in Iraq who waged a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and beheadings of hostages, has been killed in a precision airstrike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday. It was a long-sought victory in the war in Iraq.

Al-Zarqawi and seven aides, including spiritual adviser Sheik Abdul Rahman, were killed Wednesday evening in a remote area 30 miles northeast of Baghdad in the volatile province of Diyala, just east of the provincial capital of Baqouba, officials said.

"Al-Zarqawi was eliminated," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said.

At the White House, President Bush hailed the killing as "a severe blow to al-Qaida and it is a significant victory in the war on terror."

But he cautioned: "We have tough days ahead of us in Iraq that will require the continuing patience of the American people."

Al-Qaida in Iraq confirmed al-Zarqawi's death and vowed to continue its "holy war," according to a statement posted on a Web site.

"We want to give you the joyous news of the martyrdom of the mujahed sheik Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"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."

Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said the hunt for al-Zarqawi began two weeks ago, and his body was identified by fingerprints and facial recognition.

Casey said an American airstrike targeted "an identified, isolated safe house."

He said tips and intelligence from senior leaders of al-Zarqawi's network led U.S. forces to al-Zarqawi as he was meeting with some of his associates. Casey also said Iraqi police were first on the scene after the airstrike.

Video from the scene of the attack showed children scrambling over a flattened jumble of cinderblocks, concrete reinforcing bars, blankets, blue plastic bowls and other debris. A pickup truck was scorched and crushed.

Two young members of the crowd held up a child's sandal, a backpack with a teddy bear on it and a stuffed animal. The rubble was across a dirt road from a grove of palm trees.

The news came amid more reports of violence in Iraq, with two bombs striking a market and a police patrol in Baghdad, killing at least 19 people and wounding more than 40.

The announcement about al-Zarqawi's death came six days after he issued an audiotape on the Internet, railing against Shiites in Iraq and saying militias were raping women and killing Sunnis. He urged the community to fight back.

The Jordanian-born terrorist was Iraq's most-wanted militant - as notorious as Osama bin Laden, to whom he swore allegiance in 2004. The United States put a $25 million bounty on his head, the same as bin Laden. Al-Maliki told al-Arabiya television the bounty would be honored, saying "we will meet our promise," without elaborating.

Al-Zarqawi is believed to have beheaded two Americans - Nicholas Berg of West Chester, Pa., and Eugene Armstrong, formerly of Hillsdale, Mich. - prompting supporters to dub him "the slaughtering sheik."

Al-Maliki said the Wednesday night airstrike by U.S. forces was based on intelligence reports provided to Iraqi security forces by area residents.

A Jordanian official said the kingdom also provided the U.S. military with information that helped track down al-Zarqawi, who claimed responsibility for a November triple suicide bombing against Amman hotels that killed 60.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was addressing intelligence issues, would not elaborate, but Jordan is known to have agents operating in Iraq to hunt down Islamic militants.

Some of the information came from Jordan's sources inside Iraq and led the U.S. military to the area of Baqouba, the official said.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told The Associated Press that a serious effort to find al-Zarqawi had been underway since he appeared in a videotape in late April - the same week messages were broadcast by bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.

He said the location in which al-Zarqawi appeared in the videotape had been "pinpointed," without elaborating.

Baqouba has in recent weeks seen a spike in sectarian violence, including the discovery of 17 severed heads in fruit boxes. It also was near the site of a sectarian atrocity last week in which masked gunmen killed 21 Shiites, including a dozen students pulled from minibuses, after separating out four Sunni Arabs.

"Those who disrupt the course of life, like al-Zarqawi, will have a tragic end," al-Maliki said. He also warned those who would follow the militant's lead that "whenever there is a new al-Zarqawi, we will kill him."

"This is a message for all those who embrace violence, killing and destruction to stop and to (retreat) before it's too late," he said. "It is an open battle with all those who incite sectarianism."

A U.S. defense intelligence official, who requested anonymity while events were unfolding, said there is no intelligence indicating that extremists planned attacks that would be triggered by al-Zarqawi's death.

However, the official said, with his death, there may be some retaliation.

It was not clear to American authorities who would succeed al-Zarqawi as the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. The official noted that a number of al-Zarqawi's deputies have been taken out in recent months, which could cause chaos among the group's top tier.

In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said al-Zarqawi's death "was very good news because a blow against al-Qaida in Iraq was a blow against al-Qaida everywhere." Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the killing was "a significant step in ridding the world of the menace of terrorism."

In Jordan, al-Zarqawi's older brother said the insurgent leader was a martyr, and the family had long expected his death. Al-Zarqawi's family had renounced him in the wake of the Amman bombings.

"We anticipated that he would be killed for a very long time," Sayel al-Khalayleh told The Associated Press by phone from Zarqa, the town from which al-Zarqawi derived his name.

Al-Zarqawi's oversaw a wave of kidnappings of foreigners and the killings of at least a dozen, including Arab diplomats and three Americans. He also was a master Internet propagandist, spreading the call for Islamic extremists to join the "jihad," or holy war, in Iraq. His group posted gruesome images of beheadings, speeches by al-Zarqawi and recruitment videos depicting the planning and execution of its most daring attacks.

Iraqi citizens had mixed reactions to the news of al-Zarqawi's death.

Thamir Abdulhussein, a college student in Baghdad, said he hoped the killing would promote peace between the fractured ethnic and sectarian groups.

"If it's true al-Zarqawi was killed, that will be a big happiness for all the Iraqis," he said. "He was behind all the killings of Sunni and Shiites. Iraqis should now move toward reconciliation. They should stop the violence."

Amir Muhammed Ali, a 45-year-old stock broker in Baghdad, was skeptical that al-Zarqawi's death would end the unrelenting sectarian violence and said the Iraqi resistance to U.S.-led forces likely would continue.

"He didn't represent the resistance, someone will replace him and the operations will go on," he said.

In the past year, al-Zarqawi moved his campaign beyond Iraq's borders to Jordan and Lebanon, where he claimed responsbility for a rocket attack from Lebanon into northern Israel.

U.S. forces and their allies came close to capturing al-Zarqawi several times since his campaign began in mid-2003.

The closest brush may have come in late 2004. Deputy Interior Ministry Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal said Iraqi security forces caught al-Zarqawi near the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah but then released him because they did not realize who he was.

In May 2005, Web statements by his group said al-Zarqawi had been wounded in fighting with Americans and was being treated in a hospital abroad - raising speculation over a successor among his lieutenants. But days later, a statement said al-Zarqawi was fine and had returned to Iraq. There was never any independent confirmation that he was wounded.

U.S. forces believe they just missed capturing al-Zarqawi in a Feb. 20, 2005, raid in which troops closed in on his vehicle west of Baghdad near the Euphrates River. His driver and another associate were captured and al-Zarqawi's computer was seized along with pistols and ammunition.

U.S. troops twice launched massive invasions of Fallujah, the stronghold used by al-Qaida in Iraq fighters and other insurgents west of Baghdad. An April 2004 offensive left the city still in insurgent hands, but an October 2004 assault wrested it from them.



http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060608/D8I41K780.html

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1224102,00.html

[Ellron]

Thats pretty damn cool.

First thing that came to my mind any way.

[D@N]

I'm glad to hear for the sake of the soldiers serving over there. However, I doubt this will give positive repercussions. Organizations such as this very rarely collapse from leadership deaths(think of many groups in Palestine)

And while I disagree with the war in Iraq, I'm glad for the point of the men and women serving there. And hopefully it will help get some renewed vigor in their step.

In the end, i doubt it will have little if any effects on the overall structure and volume of attacks in Iraq.

[Dookiestix]

Getting our troops out will go much farther then seeing a leader of a leaderless movement taken down.

How many times have we celebrated Al Qaeda leaders taken out? And then we saw the London and Spain bombings, Aman Jordan, and the recent break-up in Canada of a horrible terror plot.

It ain't just Al Qaeda at this point, and it certainly wasn't all about Zarqawi anymore. Zarqawi is like bin Laden; a political tool in order to scare the masses.

[Snarf]

Number 2 is dead. Long live Number 2...

[Plodder]

hey finnaly itsd been 3 years

[WesternWall]

Dookiestix wrote: Getting our troops out will go much farther then seeing a leader of a leaderless movement taken down.

That's certainly what the terrorists want.

Quote: How many times have we celebrated Al Qaeda leaders taken out?

None. We celebrate the lives that won't be ripped apart by them anymore, and we celebrate the information we can get from finding their safehouses and disrupting their mass murder plans.

Quote: It ain't just Al Qaeda at this point, and it certainly wasn't all about Zarqawi anymore. Zarqawi is like bin Laden; a political tool in order to scare the masses.

Al Qaeda is literally "the base" in arabic, referring to the terrorist training camps around Afghanistan we destroyed several years ago. Any terrorist leader is a valuable target and one of the reasons the war in Iraq is a necessity is it allows us to go after terrorists in the heart of the arab world from whence they came.

[Harbinger]

Quote:
Casey said an American air-strike targeted "an identified, isolated safe house." He said tips and intelligence from senior leaders of al-Zarqawi's network led U.S. forces to al-Zarqawi as he was meeting with some of his associates.

heh, I guess he lost the support of his followers.

Either that or, somebody simply decided that this enemy poster-boy had outlived his usefulness. Things like this are usually followed by some kind of major event. It could either be something bad to boost our support of the war or, it might be something good to boost our support of the President. Since Bush's approval ratings are in the gutter, I think they'll go with the latter.

[Dookiestix]

WesternWall wrote: Dookiestix wrote: Getting our troops out will go much farther then seeing a leader of a leaderless movement taken down.

That's certainly what the terrorists want.
That's what the majority of the American people want, too. I guess we'll have to call them terrorists as well. :roll:

WesternWall wrote: Dookiestix wrote: How many times have we celebrated Al Qaeda leaders taken out?

None. We celebrate the lives that won't be ripped apart by them anymore, and we celebrate the information we can get from finding their safehouses and disrupting their mass murder plans.
None? Bullsh!t. Stay on topic rather than deflect this. We celebrated time and again whenever an Al Qaeda "leader" was taken out and pushed the propoganda that 75% of Al Qaeda's leadership was decimated when that wasn't true at all. These people can be easily replaced. And so can Zarqawi. Now he's a martyr. What part of that equation eludes you?

WesternWall wrote: Dookiestix wrote: It ain't just Al Qaeda at this point, and it certainly wasn't all about Zarqawi anymore. Zarqawi is like bin Laden; a political tool in order to scare the masses.

Al Qaeda is literally "the base" in arabic, referring to the terrorist training camps around Afghanistan we destroyed several years ago. Any terrorist leader is a valuable target and one of the reasons the war in Iraq is a necessity is it allows us to go after terrorists in the heart of the arab world from whence they came.
Yeah, I guess that would explain the bombings in London, Spain, Amman, and the recent break up of a violent terrorist plot in Canada.

The fallacy of your argument and others who go along these lines is a result of those who either forget or refuse to accept that terrorism is an IDEOLOGY, and it is not state sponsored. That is why the argument that we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here is bullsh!t. Always has been. London, Spain, Amman and Canada can all attest to that fact.

Really, one can get quite ill from all the spin. Perhaps you should slow down a bit...

[Richard Owl Mirror]

Deja vu all over again ? :wink:

[Slayer]

Harbinger wrote: Quote:
Casey said an American air-strike targeted "an identified, isolated safe house." He said tips and intelligence from senior leaders of al-Zarqawi's network led U.S. forces to al-Zarqawi as he was meeting with some of his associates.

heh, I guess he lost the support of his followers.

Either that or, somebody simply decided that this enemy poster-boy had outlived his usefulness. Things like this are usually followed by some kind of major event. It could either be something bad to boost our support of the war or, it might be something good to boost our support of the President. Since Bush's approval ratings are in the gutter, I think they'll go with the latter.

Why in the hell would he care about his ratings? Hes in his last term for christ sake. Its not like he has another term to look forward to.

[Slayer]

This just goes to show that we are making a huge difference in Iraq. If we had pulled out when all the liberals ( Cliton and Kerry just to name a few)wanted to he would still be alive, plotting other attacks. I am so proud that I am in the Middle East doing my part. Wounder if "Allah" has given him is 72 virgins? :lol:

[Slayer]

D@N wrote: I'm glad to hear for the sake of the soldiers serving over there. However, I doubt this will give positive repercussions. Organizations such as this very rarely collapse from leadership deaths(think of many groups in Palestine)


Tell that to the Families of Nicholas Berg of West Chester, Pa., and Eugene Armstrong, formerly of Hillsdale, Mich, the Americans that he beheaded, I bet they would disagree that his death has no "positive repercussions".

[Slayer]

Dookiestix wrote: Getting our troops out will go much farther then seeing a leader of a leaderless movement taken down.

How many times have we celebrated Al Qaeda leaders taken out? And then we saw the London and Spain bombings, Aman Jordan, and the recent break-up in Canada of a horrible terror plot.

It ain't just Al Qaeda at this point, and it certainly wasn't all about Zarqawi anymore. Zarqawi is like bin Laden; a political tool in order to scare the masses.

Thanks to the US Forces he will be unable to scare anyone.

[D@N]

Slayer wrote: D@N wrote: I'm glad to hear for the sake of the soldiers serving over there. However, I doubt this will give positive repercussions. Organizations such as this very rarely collapse from leadership deaths(think of many groups in Palestine)


Tell that to the Families of Nicholas Berg of West Chester, Pa., and Eugene Armstrong, formerly of Hillsdale, Mich, the Americans that he beheaded, I bet they would disagree that his death has no "positive repercussions".

Tell the families of anyone else killed gruesomely from the retaliation.

Quote: This just goes to show that we are making a huge difference in Iraq. If we had pulled out when all the liberals ( Cliton and Kerry just to name a few)wanted to he would still be alive, plotting other attacks. I am so proud that I am in the Middle East doing my part. Wounder if "Allah" has given him is 72 virgins?

If you had pulled out, and he'd still been alive, who'd he attack?, you wouldn't be there. And homeland security is enhanced so entry of terrorists into your US of A is minimized . I'm saying to quit looking for the one kill that will bring down the insurgences, there isn't any. Do you have to turn this into a left, right flame fest?

[DavidXV]

Whatever effect it may have is irrelavant, the point was to kill the thug nothing else, you know the war on terrorists which we win and they lose? He's a dead player now, no more comments from him.

He was a true freedom fighter. Yeah a real freedom fighter fighting for his freedom to murder, chop off peoples heads, and get insane followers to blow themselves up around innocent bystanders.

[Ch33kY]

I hope everyone is enjoying their 2 Minutes Hate.

Goldstein is dead. Big Brother prevails!

[Revenant]

Ch33kY wrote: I hope everyone is enjoying their 2 Minutes Hate.

Goldstein is dead. Big Brother prevails!

I liked that book, good book.

[Harbinger]

Slayer wrote:
Harbinger wrote:
Quote:
Casey said an American air-strike targeted "an identified, isolated safe house." He said tips and intelligence from senior leaders of al-Zarqawi's network led U.S. forces to al-Zarqawi as he was meeting with some of his associates.

heh, I guess he lost the support of his followers.

Either that or, somebody simply decided that this enemy poster-boy had outlived his usefulness. Things like this are usually followed by some kind of major event. It could either be something bad to boost our support of the war or, it might be something good to boost our support of the President. Since Bush's approval ratings are in the gutter, I think they'll go with the latter.


Why in the hell would he care about his ratings? Hes in his last term for Christ sake. Its not like he has another term to look forward to.

Sure but, this is a state election year and if the Republican party has any expectation of keeping it's grip on Congress, they need him to do whatever he can to help improve the parties image too. After all, Congress is more powerful then the White House.

[Kane]

So...uhh...how much longer is this going to be considered a "Developing Story?" Not to mention the continuous repetitive debates about what effect his death will have on different parts of the world...how about none? Jeez...