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June 8, 2006
Iraq: Muslim Monster Zarqawi Killed In Air Strike
We have previously heard stories that Abu Musab al Zarqawi has been killed, but news now being released claims that fingerprint, scar and facial identification have satisfied investigators that he is dead. Earlier today, at a conference in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, standing with US General George Casey, announced to Iraqi journalists: "Today, Zarqawi was eliminated." His news was greeted with heartfelt applause.
Last night Zarqawi and seven of his aides were in a house in Diyala province, 30 miles north-east of Baghdad, when a US targeted airstrike killed all eight individuals within. The "safe house" was struck on Wednesday at 6.15 pm (14. 15 GMT). It was located five miles north of Baquba.
The news is covered by the BBC, Reuters, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Herald Sun and other sources.
According to a Jordanian official, quoted in the Herald Sun, the action had involved "the Jordanian intelligence, the US intelligence and American special operations forces. It was a land operation with air cover."
According to this official, Zarqawi was, at the time of the raid, presiding over a meeting with his aides. And one nugget of information from this official will provide some comfort for relatives of Zarqawi's countless victims. He did not die instantly. The official said: "He died 10 minutes after the operation."
Anyone who has seen any of the awful snuff movies created by Zarqawi as he and his aides slowly sawed off the heads of their kidnapped hostages would be pleased to hear this news. I saw the video of Eugene "Jack" McCarthy, a US engineer being decapitated.
Blindfolded, made to kneel in an orange jumpsuit, while his captors stood above him uttering Muslim quotes to the camera, he seemed unaware of his imminent fate. Then at a signal, the aides pinned him to the floor and a large knife, not unlike a kitchen knife, was drawn out. McCarthy let out a scream, high-pitched in its intensity, as the knife was sawed through his throat. In other videos, victims usually make an awful gurgling sound as they try to breathe at this point. But McCarthy's scream continued as blood erupted from his neck and the knife continued to saw away. At some point the scream died away, and the film jumped forward, to show his head, fully detached from his neck, being lifted up and placed without its blindfold upon the shoulders of his prone body, facing the camera.
This was the fate for so many innocent people, including Muslims, who were dispatched without mercy, their death throes videotaped with eagerness by Zarqawi's assistants. One such victim was Ken Bigley, a contractor from Liverpool in the UK. He was subjected to a kangaroo court after being held hostage for three weeks in October 2004. Bigley was found "guilty" and then slowly, painfully, decapitated.
Even though one man confessed in April to have been on that "court" which ordered the murder, Ken Bigley's body has never been found. Today in the Scotsman, Bigley's brother Paul is quoted. Speaking on the news of Zarqawi's death, he said: "The man was an animal and he deserved what he got. And may he rot in hell....He's gone. The world has rid themselves of a very bad person. So he thinks he's going to paradise? I'm convinced the man is in hell."
The death of al-Zarqawi is seen as a blow to the insurgency, but it is not defeated. There may be angry reprisals by his accolytes. But one counter-terror specialist, quoted in the Reuters' report, strikes an optimistic tone. Rohan Gunaratna from the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore noted: "Zarqawi didn't have a number two. I can't think of any single person who would succeed Zarqawi. In terms of effectiveness, there was no single leader in Iraq who could match his ruthlessness and his determination."
Zarqawi's death may boost the influence of Maliki, who has vowed to crush the Sunni Arab insurgency, within his nation.
In April, Zarqawi appeared in a website video, in which he boasted: "By God, your dreams will be defeated by our blood and by our bodies. What is coming is even worse."
In October last year, Zarqawi made an announcement in which he claimed that Islam permitted the killing of "infidels".
We reported recently of the reign of terror that Zarqawi and his Sunni supporters were imposing upon citizens of West Baghdad. Hopefully with Zarqawi gone, the citizens of Baghdad will feel less terrorised.
The following is from a piece we wrote in October, with details from a book by Loretta Napoleoni, "Insurgent Iraq: al-Zarqawi and the new generation" published by Constable & Robinson.
Al-Zarqawi was born Ahmed Fadel al-Khalayleh in Zarqa, Jordan, where he grew up in poverty. Of Bedouin origin, he rebelled and dropped out of school aged 16 to become a streetwise hoodlum. He was jailed for sexual assault, and in prison he met radicals, becoming upon his release a member of the muhajideen in Afghanistan, though the fighting against the Soviets had ended by the time of his arrival. He became indoctrinated with Salafist ideology in Peshawar, through Abu Muhammed al-Maqdisi, and in 1993 the two men returned to Jordan, to set up a jihadist camp, with the intention of overthrowing the Jordanian government. The attempt failed. Both were sentenced to five years' imprisonment.
Upon his release from jail he returned to Afghanistan, meeting bin Laden in 2000 in Kandahar. Al-Zarqawi declined Osama's invite to join al-Qaeda, and set up a small training camp in Herat, to induct suicide bombers for attacks in their native homelands. After the Taliban's fall he fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, where local informants told the US about him and his jihadists. On 5 February 2003 Colin Powell announced that in Iraq there was "a deadly terrorist network, headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants". This move, says Ms Napoleoni, catapulted al-Zarqawi from relative obscurity into the political limelight overnight. The rest, as we know, is now history. In December 2004, Osama granted support to al-Zarqawi, calling him the "emir" of al-Qaeda in Iraq. And since then his notoriety his reached immense proportions. And the US, who helped give him his moments of fame, now has a $25 million reward for him, dead or alive.
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The BBC has a biography of Zarqawi, and also an account entitled: Zarqawi in his own words.
Today, a BBC TV news report states that Al Qaeda websites have confirmed that the monster Zarqawi is finally dead.
Our link-partner Central Command has a video of the attack, available HERE. It is 6mb in size, in Windows Media Format, and lasts 2 minutes 10 seconds. There may be problems accessing the page, as so many people have been accessing the site.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 8, 2006 7:38 AM
Comments
Zarqawi's death is the best news out of Iraq since the demise of Saddam. It remains to be seen whether the US would be able to exploit this undoubted victory in maneuvering for advantage against the insurgency. Zarqawi was the heart and brains of foreign-instigated terrorism in Iraq. His deserved punishment and departure make this world a better place.
Posted by: T Laskaris ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.westernresistance.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 8, 2006 1:23 PM
I doubt that this particular death will have much of an effect on the insurgency, however it is good that this savage barbarian, lacking any of the virtues of a true follower of Islam, is no longer on this earth.
In my opinion, the Prophet Mohammad, Peace be upon him, must be spinning in his grave with all the atrocities committed in His name.
There is no Paradise for those who commit these unforgivable crimes against all humanity and ultimately against themselves. The blood of innocents, shed by fanatics who have been corrupted by false preaching, should haunt these evil creatures (I can not call them people) who send the suicide bombers and push the buttons on roadside bombs.
There is something truly obscene in sending young men and women from civilized countries into a place where there is no kind of rational thinking. The warlord mentality can not be reasoned with, the fanatic can not be prevailed upon to see another point of view.
The barbaric actions of these people makes them unworthy of any kind of recognition by a world body.
In my opinion the allies should leave and allow the idiots to war among themselves. They are doing it now and allied soldiers are being killed because they are in the way and make easy targets. There will never be peace because they have no conception of honor or truth and are incapable of seeing anything from the perspective of the other factions.
There are good people in Iraq, probably the majority, however they have been oppressed for so long that they do not know how to stand up for themselves. They do not give information about insurgents and activitists who have guns and explosives to the allies even when it might prevent them from being killed.
Until they learn that they have more to gain by cooperating with the outsiders and will ultimately suffer less, they are doomed to be ground under the heels of the fanatics and the rogue clerics who preach only death and destruction.
Posted by: Anelderscholar at June 8, 2006 3:14 PM
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