(In his own home state, for chrissakes.)
2006 video of Zarqawi's death
Two U.S. Air Force F-16 fighters attacked a safe house near the town of Baqubah yesterday [June 7, 2006], killing Zarqawi, his spiritual adviser, Sheik Abdul Rahman and four other persons, Caldwell said. The fighters dropped two 500-pound bombs on the building. Zarqawi was dead when Iraqi police and U.S. military forces arrived on the scene, he said.
Al-Qaeda In Iraq Reported Crippled
Many Officials, However, Warn Of Its Resilience
The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.
There is widespread agreement that AQI has suffered major blows over the past three months. Among the indicators cited is a sharp drop in suicide bombings, the group's signature attack, from more than 60 in January to around 30 a month since July. Captures and interrogations of AQI leaders over the summer had what a senior military intelligence official called a "cascade effect," leading to other killings and captures. The flow of foreign fighters through Syria into Iraq has also diminished, although officials are unsure of the reason and are concerned that the broader al-Qaeda network may be diverting new recruits to Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Chemical Ali set to hang
The Head of the Court of Cassation and Spokesman for the Iraqi Supreme Criminal Court, Mounir Hadad, on Monday said that the three former officials who were convicted in the anti-Kurd Anfal case would be executed by hanging after Eid al-Fitr, stressing that the presidential council has no authority to ratify the execution decision.
“The execution of the three former officials will be implemented after the Eid al-Fitr,” Hadad told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
“No one has the authority to stop the execution,” he affirmed.
The execution could take place anytime after 5:00 a.m. local time.
3 al-Qaeda terrorists killed by US Military
The blows against the group in the last three days came after strikes last week near Tharthar Lake in the northern province of Salahuddin in which the military said 19 suspected leaders of the group were killed. Those strikes also killed 15 civilians.
On Saturday, U.S. forces killed the three suspected terrorists in an airstrike on two boats southwest of Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. The U.S. launched the attack after a man under surveillance boarded a boat and later rendezvoused with a second craft, and people aboard began transferring weapons and equipment, military officials said. Ground forces later found a weapons cache at a site tied to one of the men aboard.
Iraq sees dramatically low death toll
The civilian death toll in Iraq fell to its lowest level in recent memory Saturday, with only four people killed or found dead nationwide, according to reports from police, morgue officials and credible witnesses.
Saturday marked the beginning of the Eid al-Fitr feast for Shiites, the three-day capstone closing out the Ramadan month of fasting. Sunnis began celebrating the holiday on Sunday.
The daily number of civilians killed, not including those on days when there were massive casualties from car bombs, had climbed above 100 at the end of last year and the beginning of 2007.
President Bush: US Ready For Woman President, But She'll Be A Republican
"I think... a lady will be president and she'll be a Republican," Bush said in a question-and-answer session following a speech in Rogers, Arkansas. "I absolutely believe it."
"One of the things I benefited from is the advice of strong women, not only in my own house, but at the cabinet table," Bush said. "I've seen women who are plenty capable of being president of the United States, capable of making the hard decisions and capable of making sure they stick to principle."
The evidence of a drop in violence in Iraq is becoming hard to dispute.
NEWS COVERAGE and debate about Iraq during the past couple of weeks have centered on the alleged abuses of private security firms like Blackwater USA. Getting such firms into a legal regime is vital, as we've said. But meanwhile, some seemingly important facts about the main subject of discussion last month -- whether there has been a decrease in violence in Iraq -- have gotten relatively little attention. A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that "civilian deaths have risen" during this year's surge of American forces.
A month later, there isn't much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 -- down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004.
This doesn't necessarily mean the war is being won. U.S. military commanders have said that no reduction in violence will be sustainable unless Iraqis reach political solutions -- and there has been little progress on that front. Nevertheless, it's looking more and more as though those in and outside of Congress who last month were assailing Gen. Petraeus's credibility and insisting that there was no letup in Iraq's bloodshed were -- to put it simply -- wrong.
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