Well this is good news.

If you're not on some deserted desert isle, Zarqawi was killed several hours ago in an airstrike at a safe house.

Tony Snow, the new Whitehouse press secretary, was doing an admirable job during a press briefing on this good news with the ankle biting Whitehouse press corps.

It will take several days to see how this effects the sectarian violence in Iraq. Zarqawi was on the outs with AQ. The continuing blowing up of Iraqis was not doing well on the PR front. In fact the Sunni factions have of late been sending AQ operatives packing.

With Zarqawi out of the picture this should more clearly show how extensive the Iranian backed insurgency is.

For more definitive analysis, as always Michael Yon is already on this story while the MSM is still getting its feet on the ground on how to "spin" this breaking story:

When news of al-Zarqawi's death broke earlier this morning, I called the top enlisted man in Iraq, who has his finger on the pulse like nobody else, both for the big picture and the tactical level. Click here to listen to my conversation with Command Sergeant Major Jeffrey Mellinger about conditions on the ground in Iraq.

Listen to the interview

RBT

Perhaps RBT should take more breaks :-)

Update:

HT Instapundit.

Here's an interesting perspective from IraqPundit:

Zarqawi's End

An American reporter recently asked a Baghdad man what he was still doing in Iraq. This Baghdadi came from a well-to-do family, and was vulnerable to many of the capital's multiplying threats: random terror, sectarian violence, and the targeted criminal kidnappings intended to elicit ransoms. Why not leave?

The Baghdadi's answer was straightforward and heartfelt. "I prefer to stay in my country," he said simply. "Eventually, it will improve. It has to."

It improved today. Zarqawi is dead, Iraqi women are ululating in the shy, face-covering manner of my country, and Iraqi men are boisterously firing celebratory shots in the air.

Zarqawi was killed by U.S. Special Forces with the help of Iraqis. I was especially interested in the role played by the Sunni tribes in Anbar, where Zarqawi had been holed up while directing his campaign of random slaughter of Shiite men, women, and children. Although certain Western poseurs have been announcing some imaginary surge in "grass-roots" support for Zarqawi among Iraqi Sunnis, the fact is that the Anbar tribes were disgusted by the murder of countless Iraqi civilians, and united against him.

[...]

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Update II:

Michelle Malkin has a good roundup of the Blogos' reaction to the death of Zarqawi.

Allah Pundit has put together a YouTube remix of the airstrike video:

Read and see more here

Update III:

HT Regime Change Iran

Dan Darling has an excellent summary piece on the death of Zarqawi in the Weekly Standard:

Death of a Monster
The end of Abu Musab Zarqawi.
by Dan Darling
06/08/2006 7:30:00 AM


AS INFORMATION CONCERNING HIS DEMISE continues to surface, the death of Abu Musab Zarqawi marks the end of one of the most accomplished mass murderers in the modern history of terrorism. According to the claims of responsibility released by his own group in Iraq, Zarqawi and his followers have conservatively murdered thousands of Iraq civilians and hundreds of coalition soldiers--in addition to perpetrating the February 2006 bombing of the al-Askariyyah Mosque in Samarra that instigated a wave of sectarian violence across the country.

Born Ahmed Fadel Nazal al-Khalayleh, Zarqawi was first identified as a major threat during a meeting of the German-Atlantic Society in Berlin in the fall of 2002. There, Hans-Josef Beth, the head of Germany's International Terrorism Department of the Security Service, warned that Zarqawi was an al Qaeda leader who "has experience with poisonous chemicals and biological weapons." Even before the beginning of the Iraqi insurgency, the State Department's 2002 Patterns of Global Terrorism report already marked of the scope of his murderous ambitions, noting that "In the past year, al-Qaida operatives in northern Iraq concocted suspect chemicals under the direction of senior al-Qaida associate Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi and tried to smuggle them into Russia, Western Europe, and the United States for terrorist operations."

The nature and extent of Zarqawi's activities inside Iraq prior to the invasion have always been the subject of debate, though it is generally agreed that he spent a considerable amount of time in northern Iraq working with the al Qaeda associate group Ansar al-Islam.

In February 2003, then-Secretary of State Collin Powell told the U.N. Security Council that Zarqawi, was "an associated and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida lieutenants" and had "traveled to Baghdad in May 2002 for medical treatment." "During this stay," Powell noted, "nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there." These claims have been disputed by critics, including many who have argued (erroneously) that the 9/11 Commission report debunks any past claims of Iraqi collaboration with al Qaeda (in fact, the report never mentions Zarqawi).

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Update IV:

About to board SWA flight backdown to So Cal for graduations this and next weekend.

Scanning the Blogos and found some additional insightful comments about the demise of Zarqawi. I like what Tony Snow is now calling the insurgents - The Bad Guys. RBT wouldn't be so kind.

HT Blackfive:

Not Just One Pilot
We ALL got that SOB.

Some grandmother somewhere in America works in a factory soldering wires to a harness that will connect to a little square box containing a little projection camera for an F-16 Heads Up Display.

A young man or woman a year removed from high school pulled pins from 500lb bombs on a hot desert tarmac.

Another kid in America works in a foundry pouring hot aluminum alloys which will eventually find its way to the compressor stage of the F-100 engine that will power an F-16 from a runway.

Someone in America sang in a church choir on Sunday, and on Monday was holding a rivet gun, helping build another warplane, which will help keep us free.

Some group of brave men in the darkness, shined a little laser beam against a building.

Some geeky American, known for his/her math skills wrote a little program that turns numbers into coordinates.

Some young American decided to become a pilot after watching the Thunderbirds or Blue Angels put on a show.

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Ray Robison says:

Zarqawi will be the tipping point

Okay, let me go out on a limb and just say what I am thinking. Al-Zarqawi’s death will make a huge difference. I won’t waste your time discussing all the arguments against this analysis. You know them already:

Al Qaeda in Iraq is but one component of the
insurgency.
Al Zarqawi wasn’t that important anyway.
Osama never liked him anyway.
We can’t win militarily.

The fact is we can win militarily. Now to be sure, we need complimentary diplomatic, security, economic, and even humanitarian efforts. All these things are very important and have been important for the last three years.

But we can and will win militarily; I would argue won three years ago. Look at the numbers. We can only estimate what the numbers are, but they are crucial. There are three components to this insurgency; professional Mujahideen, Saddam supporters, and the disaffected who just want to make a buck and if they can get paid to blow stuff up, no problem.

[...]

In every battle there is a tipping point. Usually that point is not when a force realizes it can win, but when a force realizes it can not win and starts looking for the most beneficial endstate they can realistically achieve. The death of the mythical US defier is the point at which many in Iraq will realize they can not win despite what Murtha tells them. And with a stable government forming in Iraq now, it is better to be the US’s friend than its enemy.

So there it is, against the trend, but hey, if I am wrong, sue me (just kidding- don’t sue!)

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And of course Austin Bay is a must read:

UPDATED: Strategic and Political Implications of Zarqawi’s Death: An Important Opportunity for New Iraq


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Update V:

HT Regime Change Iran

Michael Ledeen weighs in with his two cents in this NRO article:

Iran Connects the Dots

It didn’t take long for the yackers and scribblers to start pooh-poohing the significance of the elimination of Zarqawi. The MSNBC/al-Reuters headline said it all: ‘Zarqawi more myth than Man.’ And of course, the hate-America crowd was hinting that the ‘timing’ was peculiar (Bush needed a boost in the polls), as if killing Zarqawi was just a matter of giving the order, rather than a difficult operation made possible by the great performance of our Special Forces and the active cooperation of Sunni tribal leaders in the Anbar Province, plus the Jordanians, plus the various party leaders in Baghdad.

Whatever the "explanation," the significance of this operation is enormous. It’s not just about Iraq (it very much involves North America, for example), and it effectively explodes one of the most dangerous confusions about the nature of the terror network.

[...]

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Update VI:

HT Winds of Change

This just in re more raids following death of Zarqawi. Read this tongue and cheek account. As they say priceless!

Terrorist talking points
by Yehudit at June 11, 2006 07:17 AM

Eric S Raymond:

Massive Intelligence Raids Follow Zarqawi’s Death

NEW YORK (Disassociated Press) - In a surprise sequel to the death of top al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi this morning, police have executed raids and searches on dozens of newsrooms and editorial offices belonging to a shadowy and ill-defined network called the “MSM”. The resulting haul of intelligence on terrorist objectives and strategy has been described as “priceless”.

“It’s no secret that these `Main Stream Media’ organizations have been handing the terror network a lot of its talking points,” said one spokesman. “Increasingly, terrorists have been shaping their strategy around media operations, relying on their tacit partnership with the MSM to achieve shared political goals. Cracking the media side of the operation may be the most effective way to cut off the terrorists’ oxygen.”
Representatives of the New York Times, the Reuters news agency, the Guardian, and other apparent targets of the investigation declined to comment, except to blame U.S. President George W. Bush for millions of hitherto-undisclosed Iraqi civilian casualties, higher gas prices, several extragalactic supernovas, and the Hindenburg disaster.

WOC Link

OK Atlas Shrugs is now running with this real story on the MSM, the enemy and the war of information, and the Haditha story now running in major media outlets.

Update VII:

HT In From the Cold

Spook86 has his own analysis of Zarqawi's passing:

Bad Timing

For a blogger who focuses on military and intelligence issues, there was no worse time to be on the road--and without my trusty laptop--that yesterday, when the world learned that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been "terminated" by U.S. and coalition military forces.

But there is sweet justice in knowing that Iraq's most nortorious terrorist is dead, and better yet, he was actually alive when U.S. and Polish military personnel arrived on the scene. According to some press reports, Zarqawi actually tried to climb off his stretcher when he realized he was in coalition hands, then died a short time later. It's actually a bit of a shame that Zarqawi wasn't in better shape, and might have tried to engage those Task Force 145 operators who were watching from across the street. But, after watching Zarqawi's famous "SAW" video, we know it wouldn't be been a fair fight.

[...]

At this point, the focus ought to be on the spooks and troops who arranged the meeting between Zarqawi and his maker. But, alas, too much talk of a "successful" operation might translate into higher poll numbers for George Bush, so the pictures of Zarqawi's battered body must be "balanced" by John Kerry and John Murtha declaring "mission complete," and demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of the year. It's tantamount to proclaiming victory on June 7, 1944. But, it's part-and-parcel of what passes for national security policy in most quarters of the Democratic Party. Somewhere, Harry Truman and Henry "Spook" Jackson are spinning in their graves.

But rather that focus on the nay-sayers, I'll offer one more tip of the hat to the young men and women responsible for finding and eliminating Zarqawi. Ironically, I spent part of the day Thursday in their company, as part of a group touring an Air Force DCGS site. I've written about DCGS before; it's the ground site where images and other data from various airbreather platforms (aircraft and UAVs) is analyzed, exploited, and forwarded to the operators and in the skies.

[...]

There wasn't any cheering or outward celebration in the ops center that morning--just professionals doing their job, and doing it exceptionally well. As we watched missions unfold, our escort officer pointed to the computer terminal of an Air Force lieutenant who was probably in his mid-20s. Watching the feeds from various surveillance platforms, the lieutenant (in turn) orchestrated his team while relaying data to other intel nodes and operational customers via a series of secure chat rooms. By my count, the lieutenant was monitoring at least a dozen chat rooms, connecting the front lines to ops centers and intel facilities around the world. "I don't think I could do that," whispered our escort officer, as he watched the lieutenant work.

I don't think I could, either. And ditto for the work done by the intel troops on the ground, the SOF operators on the streets of Baghdad, and the F-16 pilots who delivered Zarqawi's coup de grace. Military and intelligence service is a young person's game, and we are fortunate to have such able men and women defending our freedom, both in Iraq and in those DGS trailers where critical information is gathered and disseminated. Our country and the people of Iraq--no, make that free people everywhere--owe them a debt of gratitude. Most of them would probably settle for a simple "thank you."

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