Gathering Steam

The Zarqawi airstrike and subsequent raids on 17 compounds has snowballed into 452 raids, killing more than 100 insurgents, and obtaining yet more intel. Was the Zarqawi raid a victory? Absolutely. In every which way imaginable.

Among the documents recovered from the Zarqawi raid is this particular document:

As an overall picture, time has been an element in affecting negatively the forces of the occupying countries, due to the losses they sustain economically in human lives, which are increasing with time. However, here in Iraq, time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance for the following reasons:

1. By allowing the American forces to form the forces of the National Guard, to reinforce them and enable them to undertake military operations against the resistance.

2. By undertaking massive arrest operations, invading regions that have an impact on the resistance, and hence causing the resistance to lose many of its elements.

3. By undertaking a media campaign against the resistance resulting in weakening its influence inside the country and presenting its work as harmful to the population rather than being beneficial to the population.

4. By tightening the resistance's financial outlets, restricting its moral options and by confiscating its ammunition and weapons.

5. By creating a big division among the ranks of the resistance and jeopardizing its attack operations, it has weakened its influence and internal support of its elements, thus resulting in a decline of the resistance's assaults.

6. By allowing an increase in the number of countries and elements supporting the occupation or at least allowing to become neutral in their stand toward us in contrast to their previous stand or refusal of the occupation.

7. By taking advantage of the resistance's mistakes and magnifying them in order to misinform.

In other words, Zarqawi and his advisors knew the writing was on the wall - they were losing and had to figure out some way to regain the advantage. Unfortunately for them, they were killed in the airstrike before they were able to implement what to do next. The follow up raids have a snowballing effect - resulting in even more intel, captured insurgents, and even discovering kidnap victims and arms caches.

So what does al Qaeda do? They've announced Zarqawi's successor. Bad news for him is that the US has identified him as well. It's Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the same guy that experts thought would be Zarqawi's successor last week. It's a pseudonym, but they've got a photo and something to work with and it's only a matter of time before al-Masri meets Zarqawi in hell.

At the same time, the Pentagon has announced that the 2,500th soldier has died in the Iraq campaign. My thoughts and prayers go out to all those who lost loved ones in this conflict, but know that they have done good work in eliminating a genocidal dictator and improved the lives of millions of people by giving them hope.