US military press liasons have decided to claim some headway in Iraq by discontinuing the Abu Musab al ZarqawiTM character.
 
The world first heard of al-Zarqawi when Nicholas Berg was beheaded in a widely circulated video which coincided with the emergence of the Abu Ghraib photos. Although the video appeared to conceal western soldiers disguised as hooded Islamic militants, US spokesmen insisted the principle sword-bearer among them was “Zarqawi,” head of al Qaeda In Iraq. To this day, most Iraqis do not believe there was any AQII, nor that it might be lead by any “Zarqawi,” unless of course it exists as an American fabrication.

The Iraqi people rejoice today at the killing of “Zarqawi” because there should now be fewer 500-lb bombs being dropped on unsuspecting households in what has been the ongoing attempt to kill the mystical insurgent. While it is being reported that this successful strike annihilated an entire house and all its occupants, why is no reporter asking how many households have been obliterated by the previous air strikes?

Meanwhile, the US media is making a curiously pointless effort to report that though Zarqawi expired immediately when US troops arrived on the scene, he had been captured alive. Is this to say, as opposed to on ice? Cold storage is where many critics had suspected an al Zarqawi corpse might have been biding its time.

Maybe the time had become ripe. Having failed to resuscitate their approval ratings with the old gay-marriage attack, George W.’s party sure needed to pull something else out of the hat. Behold ol’ Zarqawi, with blown-up pictures a la Che Guevara.

Everyone from President Bush on up through the media seem to find it important too to point out that Zarqawi’s departure from the insurgency line-up will not mean a reduction of activity on the part of the Iraq resistance movement. Would this be because Zarqawi wasn’t actually responsible for any of it before his demise?

Jordanian man of mystery, Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s only verifiable action was to be know by the US military spokesmen to be Saddam Hussein’s link to al Qaeda. His Iraqi organization’s name was thoughtfully bi-lingual and idiot-proof: al Qaeda In Iraq, previously known as S.P.E.C.T.R.E.