Extreme Makeover: Musab al-Zarqawi

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al-Qaeda chief Musab al-Zarqawi was the recipient of an extreme makeover last night, along with most of his senior staff courtesy of the US forces in Iraq. As you can see, they did an exceptional job.

Apparently, the festivities took place at a staff meeting Zarqawi called in a safe house in Baquba, north of Baghdad. Ironically, this took place on the same daythe Iraqis finally finished forming a government. More on that later.

I must say, I am absolutely astounded at the coverage by the Main Stream media on this. One reporter in Baghdad, NBC reporter Mike Boettcher had an exchange with talk radio host Don Imus that is as good a representative as any. When Imus called him and asked him what the mood was in Baghdad on hearing about Zarqawi's death, here's what happened:

Boettcher: "Well, good morning, Don. We have the response here right now [to the Zarqawi killing], it’s not good. There have been, there has been another bombing. Thirteen people are dead in central Baghdad. So that is apparently the current reaction from the insurgents to Zarqawi's death."

Imus: "How do we know that's a reaction to that, Mike?"

(dead air, about 8 seconds)

Boettcher: "uhh...We don't know for sure, Don. Uhh, yeah you’re right, you’re absolutely right."

What an idiot. Someone should explain to this buffoon masquerading as a serious journalist that bombing attacks of that kind usually take days if not weeks to plan.

Unfortunately, he wasn't alone. NBC's Matt Lauer made sure to let everybody know that, my yes, the timing was very political..

Matt Lauer: "And Mik, let me just talk about the timing of this. The, the U.S. military has been rocked over the last couple of weeks by headlines suggesting an alleged massacre in Haditha. So clearly this comes at a very important time for the Pentagon."

And the Washington Post has now upgraded al-Qaeda to `insurgent' . That's a new one.

In spite of Fox News running clips of Iraqis celebrating the good news, the rest of the MSM is conspicuously mum. Obviously, there are a lot of American journalists in the Main Stream Media who don't cheer American victories any more.

While a lot of jihadi violence was already planned and in the works, this is obviously going to have a very disruptive effect on al-Qaeda in Iraq....but maybe not on the insurgency, since Iran is dealing with the lion's share of that through the Shia militias.

For al Qaeda, Iraq is still in play but I think the new focus is Israel and Jordan, and linking up with Hezbollah and the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt.

al-Qaeda will need to find someone who knows the players on the ground and can attempt pull the divergent factors together, in view of the serious losses they've suffered lately. The main job is going to be bringing order to the various al Qaeda’s factions and avoiding a bloody power struggle among commanders.