Echoing what I wrote here. From AFP:
The Pentagon expressed caution June 8 over the impact of the killing of al-Qaida’s chief in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on the violence in Iraq.
“We always tend to treat these things very conservatively here in this department on the impact of particular individuals when we didn’t have them and now when we do have them,” said Department of Defense spokesman Bryan Whitman.
Zarqawi was the “self-proclaimed leader of Al-Qaida in Iraq,” Whitman said. “He is one individual and we don’t expect that the violence in Iraq is going to end….”