How many Coaltion troops would have been killed trying to apprehend him, rather than just dropping a bomb on him?

How many innocent people would he have killed while we waited for the opportunity?

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said Thursday that the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would not completely end problems in Iraq, but "gives us hope" that Iraq will stabilize. "I am proud that American troops, with the help of Iraqis, were able to find and kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," Obama said in a statement. "He was a brutal monster whose single-minded goal was to sow instability and the death of innocent Iraqis and American forces." Obama added in the statement, "While this successful attack will not completely end the insurgency in Iraq, it does strike a major blow against al Qaeda and gives hope to the possibility of a secure and stable Iraq." He called al-Zarqawi's slaying "an encouraging development that should fill Americans and Iraqis with pride."

Peaches the choice to invade Iraq and the argument that decided whether we would occured 3years ago. Your side lost. And then in 2004 we redicided the question and you lost again.The fact that you can't accept this clouds your judgment on any news that comes out of Iraq

Should we rejoice that he is dead. No. But that doesn't me we shouldn't be happy about the situation on the ground now that he's not part of it.

I only point out that if US soldiers are killed by insurgents why are insurgents murdered by us soldiers.

Are the US soldiers that the insurgents are fighting and killing murdered, assisinated or killed?

But in reality I think we're just arguing over a word.

What about this one. Where the CBS journalists killed, murdered or assasinated?

Were the CBS journalists killed, murdered or assasinated?

The world is a better place with him gone.

How primitive we are.

Peaches the choice to invade Iraq and the argument that decided whether we would occured [sic[ 3years ago. Your side lost.

How many innocent people would he have killed while we waited for the opportunity?

(The obvious non-answer that we killed innocent people with the same bomb, and in previous attempts... there, now nobody has to repeat the point)

Peaches the choice to invade Iraq and the argument that decided whether we would occured 3years ago. Your side lost. And then in 2004 we redicided the question and you lost again.

The fact that you can't accept this clouds your judgment on any news that comes out of Iraq.

Are the US soldiers that the insurgents are fighting and killing murdered, assisinated or killed?

"IF THAT CLAIM IS BLACK PROPAGANDA, THEN IT IS CLEVER BLACK PROPAGANDA, WHICH IS ALSO EXCELLENT NEWS." --Columnist Christopher Hitchens, regarding the claim that Al-Zarqawi's death resulted from information that derived from people who were or had been close to him; cited in "A Good Day's Work: Why Zarqawi's Death Matters" (Slate, June 8)

the choice to invade Iraq and the argument that decided whether we would occured 3years ago. Your side lost.-Slado

We knew where he was. It was at a house outside Baghdad. We have thousands of trained soldiers nearby.

The fratboy punk/fake cowboy was told by some overpaid consultants who should be shot early in his career

They are invaders being repulsed. What would you do if a country invaded ours?

If we wanted justice, we would have tried to capture him.

Killing military ore terrorist leaders in wartime

Sailor writes: We knew where he was. It was at a house outside Baghdad. We have thousands of trained soldiers nearby.

Zarqawi was not killed in war or combat.

That is a ridiculous statement. Zarqawi was not "murdered" by some errant cop enforcing an arrest warrant. If an enemy soldier lobbed mortars or bombs on U.S. soldiers sleeping at their bases, that would have been a legitimate act of war against our troops, and protected by the laws of war and the Geneva Convention If we afford the insurgents and Zarqawi respect as lawful warriors, then we can bomb them as well.

It's ridiculous as a practical and legal matter to attempt to classify the insurgents who fight against us with the implements of war as domestic criminals. We have no right to enforce U.S. criminal law in Iraq, nor do we really have the right to enforce Iraqi criminal law, since there is supposedly an independent sovereign government in place.

We weren't at war then, which would have made such an attack difficult from a legal standpoint. I know you people on the left have difficulty with this concept, but the administration actually does follow the laws of war.

And before anyone cries "Gitmo", they need to realize that the people we are fighting are illegal combatants - which means that they have no Geneva protections.

Zarkawi targeted and killed civilians. That makes him an illegal combatant.

We don't afford the insurgents any recognition as lawful warriors, instead they are seen as a rebellious faction working against established authority, and in no way do we apply Geneva Convention provisions to insurgents.

The U.S. sees him as an unlawful combatant, who is neither protected by the laws of war or the geneva convention. They can do anything to him under that interpretation.

How do I feel? To hell with Zarqawi (or Zayrkawi as Bush calls him). He was an American creation- he came along with them- they don't need him anymore, apparently. His influence was greatly exaggerated but he was the justification for every single family they killed through military strikes and troops. It was WMD at first, then it was Saddam, then it was Zarqawi. Who will it be now? Who will be the new excuse for killing and detaining Iraqis? Or is it that an excuse is no longer needed- they have freedom to do what they want. The slaughter in Haditha months ago proved that. "They don't need him anymore," our elderly neighbor waved the news away like he was shooing flies, "They have fifty Zarqawis in government."

legal combatants wear identifying uniforms/markings. That's for the protection of civilians, btw - the idea is that soldiers can differentiate between combatants and non-combatants. When someone takes up arms and does not follow that convention, they gain some advantages - but they also lose the protections of the Geneva Conventions. If you don't play by the rules, you shouldn't expect to get their benefits

There is a really good reason why every communist nation on earth has had people risk death to get out of them, and an even better reason why you never see the same terrified and horrifically dangerous exodus from a free Republic.

There is something not only politically odious, but psychologically perverse in the lurid and manic response of the US government and media to the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The exultation in the Islamist terrorist's demise, replete with gruesome photos of the corpse plastered across newspapers and displayed on TV screens, takes on an almost ritualistic character.

The US Zarqawi campaign was largely aimed at the American public and above all the American voter. It was intent on hammering in the message that the invasion of Iraq was a reasonable response to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. This meant it was necessary to show that al Qaeda was strong in Iraq and play down the fact that this had only happened after the invasion.

Peaches I can blog with half my brain tied behind my keyborad. But thanks for caring :-)

Peaches the choice to invade Iraq and the argument that decided whether we would occured 3years ago. Your side lost. And then in 2004 we redicided the question and you lost again.

Kdog. Are the US soldiers that the insurgents are fighting and killing murdered, assisinated or killed?

cpinva - The question, of course, is this.

Given the same type of government, would you even be an insurgent?

Apples and oranges, eh?

And if you would, wouldn't that be a "my country right or wrong position?"

And don't you consider that "bad?"

So time to dispel some myths. Zarqawi did not really belong to al Qaeda. He would have been more shocked than anybody when Colin Powel spoke before the United Nations in the propaganda build up to the war and mentioned Zarqawi publicly for the first time, accusing him of being the link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Zarqawi in fact did not get along with Bin Ladin when he met him years earlier. He found Bin Ladin and the Taliban insufficiently extreme and refused to join al Qaeda or ally himself with Bin Ladin, setting up his own base in western Afghanistan instead, from where he fled to the autonomous area of Kurdistan in Iraq, outside of Saddam's control, following the US attacks on Taliban controlled Afghanistan in late 2001. Zarqawi only went down into Iraq proper when the Americans liberated it for him.
...
Zarqawi was not very important in the first place, and hardly represented the majority of the resistance or insurgency. When he arrived in northern Iraq he was a nobody.
...
Although he claimed several significant attacks, such as the United Nations bombing and the assassination of Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq leader Muhamad Bakir al Hakim, Zarqawi and his foreign fighters were a numerically insignificant proportion of the anti American fighters.
It took the United States to make Zarqawi who he became. Intent on denying that there was a popular Iraqi resistance to the American project in Iraq, the Americans blamed every attack on Zarqawi and his foreign fighters, and for a while it seemed every car accident in Baghdad was Zarqawi's fault. The truth was that much of Iraq's Sunni population, alienated by the Americans who removed them from power and targeted them en masse during raids, supported and participated in the anti American resistance.

Zarqawi died shortly after the U.S. military obliterated his hideout northwest of Baghdad Wednesday with two 500-pound bombs. The bombs tore a huge crater in the date palm forest where the house was nestled outside the town of Baqouba.... Caldwell also said experts told him it is not unheard of for people to survive a blast of that magnitude. "There are cases when people, in fact, can survive even an attack like that on a building structure. Obviously, the other five in the building did not, but he did for some reason," Caldwell said..... So much blood covered al-Zarqawi's body that U.S. forces cleaned him up before taking photographs. "Despite the fact that this person actually had no regard for human life, we were not going to treat him in the same manner," [general] Caldwell said.

In Ghalibiya, near the scene of Mr. Zarqawi's death, a local Iraqi interviewed by telephone said American commandos dressed in black had raided the hamlet around 4 a.m. The Iraqi, a farmer named Mustafa Muhammad, said a group of local Iraqis, standing guard to protect their predominantly Sunni village from Shiite death squads, fired their guns into the air. "They thought the Americans were a death squad, dressed in black," Mr. Muhammad said. The American commandos threw a hand grenade in response, he said, killing five villagers. The Pentagon does not officially acknowledge the existence of these classified units, and President Bush's comments were a rare acknowledgment of the role these troops played in a high-level mission.

..you call "evert" mistake.. ..I "comfused" one for the other ..wasn't I incorrect but "accturate?"

Squeaky - Yep. Nothing like an Iraqi farmer located somewhere near ... interviewed by...yeah, un huh. Proof positive...eh????

We in the media are often pilloried for only reporting "the bad news" in Iraq. But there is no good news. Its too dangerous to even tell you how bad things really are, but they are worse than what you see on the media, not better.