Mr. Zarkowi has assumed room temp.
 

Whilst listening to Coast to Coast AM, their was a news flash that we got Zarkowi. He was running the insurgency effort in Iraq.

We can only hope that all the bullshit in Iraq will end.

I hope its "Mission Accomplished" but I don't think that leadership in an insurgency is really that important. Maybe it will be a symbolic thing that'll get the Iraqis engaged in running their country? Either way we can declare victory and end it.

Top Iraqi blogger Iraq The Model talks about the town where they got him and points out that it was tips from locals that did it:

What is Hibhib?

Hibhib is a small town several kilometers to the northwest of Baquba and most of its people are from the Azzawi tribes.

This small town was traditionally nicknamed Um al-Arak as it was famous for producing some of the finest Arak in Iraq, an industry that flourished in the area for the abundance of date palms. It's even said that Hibhib's Arak can make the fox get drunk!

Of course that was before hte Salafi Zarqawi tide reached this once peaceful town.

It was quite visible lately that Hibhib became a place for intense terror activity, especially after the phenomenon of severed heads appeared. Severed heads of civilian Iraqis were found twice in fruit boxes in and around Hibhib; a terrible crime that shocked Iraqis. Also a few days ago 19 passengers, mostly students were murdered in cold blood just north of Hibhib which indicated that a seriously bloody terror cell was in this area.

There had been several reports about Zarqawi fleeing Anbar to Diyala after the tribes in Ramadi turned against al-Qaeda but obviously, Diyala and its suburbs and Iraqi tribes were not willing to endorse the head chopping criminal.

In the first official confirmation, PM al-Maliki said that Jordan has provided intelligence that was used in the raid on Zaraqwi's hiding place but he also stressed that tips from locals were the primary lead to Zarqawi's exact location and these were the information according to which the missiles were guided.

Al-Maliki said that among the 7 killed with Zarqawi were two women who were responsible for collecting intelligence for the al-Qaeda HQ cell.

It's not mission accomplished, though. Al-Qaeda isn't designed for top-down leadership like an army, but rather as individual, self-sustaining cells.

The White House had confirmation on this at 9 p.m. EDT. The fact that it couldn't get the announcement out in time for the morning papers is an indictment of Bush's media handlers. Instead of something the Bushies can point to as a victory in the headlines, all it got was another day of Haditha. Ouch.

NPR this morning interviewed a few "experts" who said that Zarqawi had been replaced as leader of the insurgency some time ago by an un-named person. Zarqawi's brutal tactics, like the beheadings of hostages, had gone too far, and angered many in the Arab world. They caused a backlash that hurt the cause of the insurgency. According to these NPR experts, he had been marginalized for quite some time, and his being turned in by the locals shows this.

I'm glad they got this SOB, and it gives me some hope that things may get better in Iraq. Getting him may be evidence of some positive changes in the thinking of Iraqis, but the only thing we know for sure is that it's a big symbolic victory.

I'm with Griff. Maybe we should claim this is THE victory, and pull out now while we can. Save some face.

Think the long game, Maui. The Bush admin treats print media with contempt. If the morning papers don't have the biggest news in months, being reported on all media this morning except for the morning papers, it is most certainly not a victory for the morning papers.

I'm listening to Penn and Drudge talking about the net right now. I wonder if the papers will find a reason to exist?

addendum to that thought: The NYT headlines in my e-mail does not have the Zarqawi story...

...so...the American news media will have to find a new figurehead :::yawn:::

Can we all vote on who it should be?

How about one of those intolerable AGers?

\

I was thinking more along the lines of a Nick Lachey-type character, but, ok.

You watch TV news on the subway? Probably not.

Well I first got the news from the Cellar, not TV news.

But you're right Maui: literally, the only people who can't get the internet reliably are both underground and moving rapidly.

They will have to be content to know that during their time in transit they will be uninformed.

Not necessarily.

A lot of people don't turn on the TV or the home computer in the morning. Maybe they have kids home for the summer and they don't want to wake the little yardapes up. Maybe they would rather watch SportsCenter, QVC or the Weather Channel in the morning. Maybe they want to go for a jog or they want to work out. Maybe they're just in too much of a hurry. Maybe they don't want to take the trouble.

But they got the newspaper out of the driveway. Ours had Haditha as the major story, with a graphic showing which civilians were killed and exactly where.

Right now, the Bush2 administration needs a victory in which it can control the message. This could have been it. Assuming the 9 p.m. confirmation time (as in, that's when they were utterly sure Zarqawi was dead), the White House could have announced this in the middle of primetime TV for the eastern half of the nation (where the majority of Americans live) and at the start of primetime for the western half. In the Pacific Time Zone, that would have been several hours of "Look what we and our allies did today!" The media (which the Bushies *hate*) would be racing to catch up and the Bushies would be able to direct the message -- in full view of the American people.

Controlling your own message is one of the basic tenets of political science. This administration couldn't even handle that.

EDIT-1stADD

Bush knew at 4 p.m. yesterday.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13197560/

It was not announced for another 12 hours.

Failure to control the message.