al-Zarqawi Eliminated; Satan prepares a spot...

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's leader in Iraq who led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and kidnappings, has been killed in an air strike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday, adding that his identity was confirmed by fingerprints and a look at his face. It was a major victory in the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the broader war on terror.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said al-Zarqawi was killed along with seven aides Wednesday evening in a remote area 30 miles northeast of Baghdad in the volatile province of Diyala, just east of the provincial capital of Baqouba, al-Maliki said.

The announcement came six days after the Jordanian-born terror leader issued an audiotape on the Internet, railing against Shiites in Iraq and saying militias were raping women and killing Sunnis and the community must fight back.
Al-Maliki said the air strike was the result of intelligence reports provided to Iraqi security forces by residents in the area, and U.S. forces acted on the information.

A Jordanian official said that Jordan also provided the U.S. military with information that helped in tracking al-Zarqawi down. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was addressing intelligence issues, would not elaborate, but Jordan is known to have intelligence agents operating in Iraq to hunt down Islamic militants.
Some of the information came from Jordan's sources inside Iraq and led the U.S. military to the area of Baqouba, the official said.

Baqouba has in recent weeks seen a spike in sectarian violence, including the discovery of 17 severed heads in fruit boxes. It was also near the site of a sectarian atrocity last week in which masked gunmen killed 21 Shiites, including a dozen students, after separating out four Sunni Arabs.

Points to ponder:

-Good thing we didn't cut and run John Murtha-style a few months back, otherwise this spitbag would be running Iraq instead of being laid to rest in a pressboard coffin.
-since apparently some of the intelligence came from inside the province he was holed up in, there is much less support for the insurgents (and their horrific practice of murder and mayhem) than the media would have you believe.
-we are getting help from Jordan, an Arab state - I guess they don't hate us after all. But we are still unilateralists until France gets on board, right?
-how soon will the media tell us that the offing of al-Zarqawi has "created even more terrorists in his stead"? Or how quickly do they push it aside to tell us the "real issue" is the show trial of the Marines in Haditha?

It doesn't matter. Today is a good day.