Americans have good reason to applaud the death of Abu Mussaub Al Zaquari, and many of them have. This is true even among many of the Far Left, though with reservations, in many cases. The death of this vile human cancer, unfortunatly, may be somewhat like the removal of a tumor that has already metastisized, and spread. The major harm that he may have been doing, however, was not merely to any potential middle east peace hopes, which are already slim at best, but to the reputation of Al-Queda as a force for the protection of Islam in the hearts and minds of a good many Arab Muslims, at least among the more traditionalist minded Sunni populations.
His targeting of not only Shi’ite but Sunni civilians, particularly in Jordan, but in Iraq as well, and the massive causalties among all Arabs that he was to a large degree creditied for, had earlier brought about a reprimand from number two Al-Queda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who cautioned him that he might be turning Muslims against the cause in ever increasign numbers.
Yet, not too long before his ultimate demise, Al-Zawahiri issued a videotape, in which he briefly mentioned Zarqawi as a valued friend and ally of the cause. This almost can be construed as a cover to hide any involvement in the procss by which the Jordanian terrorist mastermind was betrayed to the American forces by a close associate, who informed him of Zarqawis whereabouts.
Hopefully, the 25 million dollar bounty that this informant would have been entitled to will not by him be turned over to some degree to the Al-Queda organization. Even two or three million dollars, to say nothing of ten or twenty million, would greatly serve to bolster and enhance any one ongoing terrorist cell operation, whether that might be in Iraq, Europe, or here in the US.
It would certainly go a long way toward possibly enabling the cancer that is a metastises of fundamentalist Islam to seek to engage in it’s own brand of radiation and/or chemical therapy.
Despite this, no one should question that it is a good thing that this vile excuse for a human beig has been destroyed, and there can be no question that he has been. Yet, some have questioned it, wondering aloud how it is that the DNA tests that confirmed his identity were done at a far more rapid rate than would normally be the case, a matter of a couple of days as oppossed to the two week orlonger process that isusualy required. I can only assume that samples of his DNA have all ready been tested and compared, which made the process much easier than normal.
Nor do I take too seriously reports that Zarquawi, initialy alive, was brutaly beaten upon his recovery by the American forces. In fact, I absolutely don’t believe it in the least. The troops who recovered Zarqawi were relativly fresh, the operation amounting to the mere dropping of two five hundred pound bombs on his hideout. There was no huge, high pitched, hard scale battle to force up the adrenaline of American soldiers to dangerous levels, so there would be no reason to suppose that their professionism was compromised, as it may have been in a handful of unusual cases.
The worse thing about all this is, it may be too little too late. Someone will rise to take Zarqawi’s place as leader of Al-Queda in
Still, operations already in the works have been compromised by the discovery of computers, hard drives intact, which seem to have vital information stored. Also, Zarqawis main focus, the driving of further wedges between Shias and Sunnis, in the hopes of instigating all out civil war between them in Iraq, may as well have been serously thwarted, at least in the long run.
But for the time being, there is going to be little apparent difference.
