I've got to run to the conference in a minute, but this morning we dispatched a monster. Zarqawi's crimes were heinous and manifold, he sawed off the heads of innocents and obliterated the lives of civilians. His destruction is a morale victory, if nothing else.
Will it change Iraq? I hope so, but highly doubt it. Zarqawi was something of an outsider to an insurgency that's sectarian-based and homegrown -- he overstated his own importance, we bought into the myth because we needed an enemy, but the insurgency itself never was his creation or accepted his authority. From all I understood, he was being ever more rejected by the movement he'd helped found. In any case, the insurgency is self-sustaining, not reliant on a charismatic leader or strategic genius for its perpetuation. But good can still come from this. As Matt says, even if Iraq doesn't change, we could use the death of our bete noire over there to begin redeploying away from the country.
Update: You know what impresses me? That we not only had snapped a massive picture of the slain terrorist's corpse, but that we had the presence of mind to frame it. Gotta wonder if they had a nice frame just sitting around, or some poor grunt was dispatched to the Iraqi Michael's at 3 in the morning. Also: did Zarqawi really have one leg, as many seem to have thought? Or was that a myth?
