al-Zarqawi Saw His Captors (Before He Saw the Virgins)

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had the disquieting experience of having his world blown up around him, and then got the chance to meet his captors before the virgins came to carry him away:

Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was found alive by Iraqi police and U.S. forces who arrived at the scene of the bombing raid near Baqouba, a U.S. official told FOX News on Friday.

"Zarqawi was alive when U.S. forces arrived on the site," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said in a satellite interview from Iraq. "The Iraqi police arrived first, they found him in the rubble, put him on a gurney of some type."

Caldwell, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said Zarqawi tried to roll off the gurney to escape once he became aware of the fact that he was being taken into custody by coalition troops Wednesday night after two 500-pound precision guided bombs blew up his safehouse near Baqouba.

U.S. forces immediately identified him as Zarqawi but were unable to interrogate him because he died "shortly after" being pulled from the rubble, Caldwell said.

If there's any justice, Zarqawi suffered some of the fear and pain that his many victims suffered before they died. And I hope that as his lights dimmed for good, the last thing he ever saw in this world was a US Special Forces soldier...grinning.

Yesterday I was watching the local news, and the NBC affiliate in LA went to a guy who runs their "digital newsroom" which was monitoring the blogs for reaction to Zarqawi's demise. I don't know where this guy was finding his sites, but he ran a bunch of quotes from several sites that were pure nutso stuff. He found all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories and almost seemed to be trying to make the point that the whole thing was fiction. There was no attempt at balance or quoting from mainstream sites which didn't buy into every wacky theory promoted by the left.

This guy needs to get better links.

Hugh points us to a piece by Pastor Sensing which might explain what some Muslims might be thinking as this battle goes on:

The death of Zarqawi does nothing to make Islamism's vision of utopia appear more likely in the eyes of the hundreds of millions of Muslims who are sitting on the fence, waiting to see which side to step off to. If al Qaeda et. al. really are the keepers of the true faith of Islam, as they insist they are, then it's reasonable for other Muslims to ask just when Allah will finally get in the game.

I think that more and more Muslims will decide that Ashraf al-Akhras is right: Allah is in the game, but not on al Qaeda's side.

Good stuff.

Meanwhile the press continues to ask silly questions. One that keeps coming up is whether the demise of Zarqawi will end the terrorism in Iraq. Of course it won't. It's a big victory, but it's not the end of the war.

I think there's a WWII comparison that might be appropriate. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was the commander of the combined Japanese fleet, and was responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1943 our code breakers determined that Yamamoto was going to be touring some of the outlying Japanese bases, and we sent in Army P-38's to intercept his flight and shoot him down. Yamamoto's death was a big blog to Japan, but the war went on for two more years.

The terrorists in Iraq are certainly less organized than the Japanese military forces were in 1943, so the likelihood is that their demise will come quicker, but just as the Japanese were finally vanquished, so too will the terrorists.