If al Zarqawi is one of the dead, how many on this forum think Jordanian agents suddenly "worked a little harder" to tip off the Americans, having the Amman attacks still fresh in their minds?

Posted by: jimbabwe at November 20, 2005 8:45 PM

So what if they did "work a little harder" to tip off the Americans. Just because they feel that the perpetrators of THIS attack deserve to be caught, they choose to help.

Maybe when/if this type of assistance becomes commonplace and not based upon who is deemed "friendly" I will start to give a sh*t.

Posted by: AngryMuppet at November 20, 2005 9:33 PM

Suppose Zarqawi was killed. And suppose next week Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri were killed. There would be dangerous complacency. It would be said that "victory" is in sight, that we "have them on the run" and so on. But the deaths of all of these people, or another thousand or ten thousand, or hundred thousand, will not change the nature of what is contained in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. Da'wa will continue to be conducted throughout the Lands of the Infidels, and demographic conquest proceed, perhaps without the opposition that had been gradualy forming, because now, with the deaths of these much-sensationalized figures, supposedly the threat is manageable, or still worse, regarded as something that is past.

It could happen. People are eager to believe that this is a transient phenomenon, or at least a phenomenon that can somehow be defeated by killing this or that leader, or series of them, or enough of that presumably unreplenishable supply of "Jihadis" (a misleading word, implying as it does some kind of isolated warrior-class within Islam, akin to the Kshatriya caste in Hinduism).

One hopes Zarqawi is dead. One fears the reaction of too-great satisfaction and a letting-down of all sorts of guards.

Posted by: Hugh at November 20, 2005 10:05 PM

I have to agree with you there, AngryMuppet. I think the US expends a lot of effort telling other nations victimized by Islamic terrorism to shut up, grin and bear it. And then when it's Americans being hurt by Islamists, suddenly everybody else is supposed to snap to attention, and keep their eyes peeled. It's the new version of the Ugly American.

I'm hoping that as time goes on, Americans will realize that, just as in weight loss, you can't do "spot reduction". All the Islamic violence is fed from a common pool. Either you reduce Islamic violence everywhere, or it's only going to creep back in, as it draws support from elsewhere.

And as with weight loss, you've got to cut down on those calories. Unless the world develops ways around its petroleum addiction, the Islamists have a free unlimited bankroll and eventual carte blanche.

Posted by: sanman at November 20, 2005 10:09 PM

I agree with you too, Hugh. If you overlook the wider Muslim population from which the militants are coming from, then they are going to be the invisible reservoir that keeps replenishing the ranks of the fallen. It's like trying to fight the Vietnam War purely south of the DMZ, and ignoring the masses of NVA in the north who kept coming across.

There's no point in trying to drill a hole in water/mud. One has to drain the swamp, and not keep trying to drill holes in it, in a futile manner. This means that radical Islam has to be ideological and political defeated.

Posted by: sanman at November 20, 2005 10:16 PM

A U.S. official said Sunday that efforts were under way to determine if terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead.

How much effort can that take. They know everthing about him except where he is. If he's among the dead, from a gunfight, it should only take minutes to confirm it.
Of course he's been killed a couple of times before and still seems to be walking around...maybe this time it took...

Posted by: duh_swami at November 20, 2005 10:30 PM

I have to agree with you there, AngryMuppet. I think the US expends a lot of effort telling other nations victimized by Islamic terrorism to shut up, grin and bear it. And then when it's Americans being hurt by Islamists, suddenly everybody else is supposed to snap to attention, and keep their eyes peeled. It's the new version of the Ugly American.

I'm confused. How did America become the bad guy because Jordanians may have extended extra effort to find a terrorist after he killed a bunch of Jordanians?

Posted by: Roxane at November 20, 2005 10:38 PM

A U.S. official said Sunday that efforts were under way to determine if terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead.

How much effort can that take. They know everthing about him except where he is. If he's among the dead, from a gunfight, it should only take minutes to confirm it.
Of course he's been killed a couple of times before and still seems to be walking around...maybe this time it took...

Posted by: duh_swami at November 20, 2005 10:40 PM

From a news item I read, bodies of six men and one woman, all burned beyond recognition, were recovered. Forensics experts were attempting to recover usable DNA samples from the corpses to compare with known DNA samples.

Posted by: Lisa at November 20, 2005 10:45 PM

RE: Roxanne (& sanman)

"I'm confused. How did America become the bad guy because Jordanians may have extended extra effort to find a terrorist after he killed a bunch of Jordanians?"

I am confused too...
My point was that I don't feel any gratitute towards those that assist in the location/capture of terrorists as they seem to be doing so selectively.

Sanman: could you please clarify what you were trying to say? How is the US telling other victims of terror to "shut up" and "bear it", let alone "expending a lot of effot" doing so?

Posted by: AngryMuppet at November 20, 2005 10:57 PM

Zarqawi was just a bit player in much bigger game. The big fish are still out there orchestrating terror attacks with other al-Qaida aligned terror groups. Stopping now if Zarqawi is dead would be folly on the part of the U.S. and the allies.

Posted by: WineDrinkingInfidel at November 20, 2005 11:01 PM

I checked with Allah about Zarqawi. Allah said he (Zarqawi) had not arrived yet, and may have been intercepted by the trouble maker Iblis.
Allah expressed concern about Abu, as Iblis is not fond of any humans more brutal than he is. Professional jealosy he called it. Allah confided to me that some of Abu's 72 virgins are getting tired of waiting, they are starting to flirt with those little boys, pure as pearls. If Abu doesn't get there soon, they will start the orgy without him...

Posted by: duh_swami at November 20, 2005 11:27 PM

Let us assume it is Zarqawi who was killed.

How shall this event be used?

Should it be used to insist that "we have to stay the course" because this "shows we are winning"? That is plausible. It still does not answer the question: what are "we winning" in Iraq by continuing to suppress the Sunnis on behalf of, not "Iraq" but rather the Shi'a who will inerit Iraq, or as much of it as they can. That will never be accepted by the Sunni Arabs outside Iraq, and certainly they will never regard a Shi'a-dominated Iraq as a model of anything.

Should it be used as a final marker, so that a certain American leader, or someone "taking a leadership role," can say, in a speech, quite truthfully, as follows:

Tonight, I'm here to review with you the current status of our intervention in Iraq, what we've accomplished, and where we go from here.

Here's some of what we've accomplished since we entered Iraq, in an invasion that was both rational and prudent, to discover and destroy whatever major weaponry the aggressive Saddam Hussein either possessed, or was attempting to gain possession of. Naturally our alarm was not caused by him alone, but by his obvious connections, as a self-described Leader of the Arabs, with other Muslims, and Jihadist groups, the most famous of which is called, as we all know, Al Qaeda, but that name may simply be taken generically, as representing all of the thousands of groups, big and small, devoted to the Jihad to spread Islam through aggressive means, whether that is qital, or combat, or terorrism against civilians.

Here is some of what the American officers and men achieved in their decisive victory, within three weeks, to depose Saddam Hussein, and in the more than two and a half years since, when they stayed to help out, as much as they reasonably could be asked to help out, in the aftermath of that stunning victory.

Here is only a partial list of what they, of what the military forces supported by the American people, managed to achieve:

1. We removed a dictator who had massacred Shi'a and Kurds and even oppressed the Sunnis, all except a small group that was related or otherwise connected to him from Tikrit, with a very few people outside.

2. No one else would or could have captured that dictator -- the Arab League certainly showed no signs of disapproving what he did to the Kurds or the Shi'a (why should they, after all). He had held power for nearly 30 years. His two sons were fully prepared to carry on for another 25 years. Only the United States could, and did, remove him.

3. We played a game of Fifty-Two Pick-Up with his henchman, most successfully.

4. We handed him over to be tried by Iraqis, as a way of eduating both the world, and those in Iraq, about what he did and why he had to be toppled.

5. We built tens of thousands of schoolrooms, refurbished or rebuilt and re-equipped hospitals.

6. We built water-treatment plants so that 4.5 million people now have potable water for the first time.

7. We guarded, and constantly repaired, oil fields that were attacked.

8. We built or expanded power grids.

9. We did everything we could conceivably do to earn the trust of Iraqis, right down to the soccer balls and toys handed out to chidlren who seemed, when they had not been enrolled in hostile activities, that part of the population still least affected by beliefs and attitudes that cause others to be remarkably hostile, rather than grateful, to us.

10. We steadily inflicted casualties on those who do not want power to be distributed in Iraq through the exercise of the secret ballot, because that exercise will cause them to lose power and control which they insist on retaining.

11. In killing Zarqawi, we have dealt not a mortal blow, but a great blow, to those who came from outside to use Iraq in their war to retain the old order, of Sunni Arabs, who were to be kept over the non-Arab Kurds and the non-Sunni Shi'a.

And here is what we could not do:

1. We could not end the crazed conspiracy theories and rumors which, for reasons that deserve to be pondered, are found in such abundance in the Muslim and especially Arab Muslim world.

2. We could not, no matter what we did, earn the unfeigned and permanent gratitude of most of the populace, which clearly wants us to leave.

3. We could not repair the fissures within Iraq, for they are long-lasting, and based on real grievances, in some cases going back to the beginning of Islam, for the Sunni-Shi'a split dates from 661 A.D. Of course the history of modern Iraq has not diminished the mistreatment of some -- non-Arab Kurds by Arabs, Shi'a by Sunni -- but rather, the behavior of those Sunni Arabs has been the cause of such resentments.

4. Under Saddam Hussein, the mistreatment of the Kurds and the Shi'a became outright persecution and murder, and there were hundreds of thousands of Kurds massacred in the Al-Anfal campaign, and even more Shi'a killed after the 1991 uprising.

4. We have tried everything to make Iraq a functioning nation-state. Obviously we did not come "for oil." We will pay, we are paying, the market price for Iraqi as for all other oil. No favors have been done for us by the Iraqi government when it comes to oil. It is we who have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to remove Saddam Hussein, to suppress those who continue to want to keep a small minority in power, and to build, in ways little and big, the essential infrastructure.

And far from encouraging fissures within Iraq, again and again we have urged the Shi'a in power to give more represntation to the Sunnis, to encourage them to vote, to meet many of their demands, to ensure that the Sunnis feel that they have not lost power, and that they will not be treated the way, when Saddam Hussein held power, the Shi'a were treated.

But now, after the capture of Saddam Hussein and the capture or killing of all of his main associates, after the January elections, after the writing of the Constitution and the referendum held on that Constitution, after the second set of elections in December to elect a permanent government, after the killing of the leading outside terrorist, now Iraq, a country after all of 27 million people, should at this point be able to protect itself and its own gains. We have pressing needs for our armed forces elsewhere, and they must be brought home for retraiinig, regrouping, redeployment at some future date. We cannot continue to remain in Iraq at the will or whim of others, or based on how they perform. They have responsibilities to themselves. We have responsibillites to ourselves.

We will leave, not precipitously, not overnight, but slowly, from January to the summer of 2006. We wish Iraq and its people well. We hope they will be true to themselves and to their best instincts. We have done what we can. Iraq itself has the second, or possibly even the first, largest oil reserves in the world. It will not want for money. How its people will share that vast future revenue is a matter for them to decide, in the ways that they decide. We cannot be their keeper, their trainer, their permanent sitter or bodyguard. They don't want it, and we don't want it.

So it is time to leave. We have accomplished much in Iraq. But there is much more that needs to be accomplished elsewhere.

Goodnight, and may God Bless America."

Well, something like that. You write your own speech for him. Change whatever you like. Just make sure he can deliver it in the time allotted. Mood: serious, somber, at the desk in the White House. No Carterian sweater before the fireplace.

But after he's finished delivering the speech you've written for him, you can let out a yippee! in the manner of Gabby Hayes or someone else in the saloon. Remember: he's on television, but you are at home. Nobody can hear you. Feel free.

Posted by: Hugh at November 21, 2005 12:09 AM

The fact that Zarqawi was killed is no problem. He was only one of the heads of the Islamic dragon.

The dragon of islam grows another head (or a number of them), as bloodthirsty and lethal, as soon as his head is cut.

When will we deal with the dragon (Islam) as a whole?

It is difficult, nay impossible to deal with a threat of such magnitude when your own leaders keep saying that this bloodthirsty dragon is "a peaceful religion".

Posted by: rocky at November 21, 2005 12:15 AM

Spot on Rocky. Focusing efforts on Zarqawi, bin Laden and other prominent figureheads and organisations is the preferable course of action at the current time.

In this current age of multiculturalism, all cultures/religions are equal and therefore critical analysis that asserts a particular religion (for instance Islam) is inferior to any other religion is frowned upon.

Targeting an entity that can be separated from the underlying culture/religion (even if the religion is responsible for that entities behaviour) allows us to deal with the "heads of the dragon" until it is possible for us to deal with Islam as a whole.

Posted by: AngryMuppet at November 21, 2005 12:36 AM

We wish....But we were told Zaqawi only had ONE LEG yet it seems he is a master of disguise and flits from one end of Iraq to the other without difficulty. Even if he is dead, agree with other Posters that there will be plenty more to take his place. Can only assume our Leaders are trying to boost morale among troops in this Hellhole.
O.T. doco about holidays in Indonesia [despite warnings for westerners NOT to go there] - seems that teeming millions of Indonesians NEVER LEARN TO SWIM! Probably some ridiculous command in Koran stops them from learning - they might have to display flesh - a heinous sin no doubt, just like not wearing a teacosy on your head!!
Had a chuckle seeing young model Michelle Leslie -from being attired in a burka & talking of conversion to Islam in Indonesian court - once
free is dressed again in figure hugging Infidel outfit, drinking champagne on the flight to Singapore. Well, wouldn't anyone of us wear a black tent and feign an Islamic conversion to get
out of a foetid jail in Indonesia?? Muslims in Australia are jumping up and down in their usual outrage...

Posted by: Morgane at November 21, 2005 5:18 AM

A L L A H = S A T A N

M U H A M M A D = A L L A H 'S P R O P H E T

F O L L O W I N G I S L A M = E T E R N A L D E A T H S E N T E N C E

THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE = JESUS CHRIST

JOHN CHAPTER 8 VERSE 42-47 SAYS:

The Children of the Devil

42Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me.

43Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say.

44You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

45Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!

46Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don't you believe me?

47He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God."

Posted by: DiscipleofJesusChrist at November 21, 2005 6:38 AM

The deaths of Zarqawi and and OBL certainly wouldn't bring an end to jihad, but thier deaths would bring us closer to justice.

Posted by: kevin at November 21, 2005 11:23 AM

bin Laden (whom I believe is dead) and Zarqawi are educated men. To kill a snake you cut off it's head. The more the top leaders are killed the more al-Qaeda becomes dysfunctional.

Plenty of suicide bombers out there, but very few
leaders. There are that many educated Muslims.

Posted by: learjet0450 at November 21, 2005 8:50 PM

Correction:

There aren't that many educated Muslims.

Posted by: learjet0450 at November 21, 2005 8:51 PM