Some Iraqi reactions

At Iraq the Model Omar Fadhil's announcement of Zarqawi's end implied that local Iraqis were quite fed up with Zarqawi.

This small town was traditionally nicknamed Um al-Arak as it was famous for producing some of the finest Arak in Iraq, an industry that flourished in the area for the abundance of date palms. It's even said that Hibhib's Arak can make the fox get drunk!

Of course that was before the Salafi Zarqawi tide reached this once peaceful town.
It was quite visible lately that Hibhib became a place for intense terror activity, especially after the phenomenon of severed heads appeared. Severed heads of civilian Iraqis were found twice in fruit boxes in and around Hibhib; a terrible crime that shocked Iraqis.
Also a few days ago 19 passengers, mostly students were murdered in cold blood just north of Hibhib which indicated that a seriously bloody terror cell was in this area.

There had been several reports about Zarqawi fleeing Anbar to Diyala after the tribes in Ramadi turned against al-Qaeda but obviously, Diyala and its suburbs and Iraqi tribes were not willing to endorse the head chopping criminal.

Zarqawi's demise brought The Mesopotamian returned back to his blog after about a two month hiatus.

HELL WELCOMES ITS LATEST ILLUSTRIOUS INMATE

...You know, I am the sort of guy who gets distressed at the sight of blood and cannot bear the sight of even a dead animal, believe it or not. But you know, I was shocked at my own feelings of pleasure on beholding the photo of the dead face of Zarqawi. I would never have thought that possible. I have never felt this way my whole life. Yet the atrocities and outrages that these pseudo humans, these misanthropes, have perpetrated have engendered such anger, such sorrow, such rage that not even the most peaceful of souls can control their hatred of these criminals. My only regret was that the death was fast and sudden, and I felt pain that the true martyr of our country our beloved Ussama Al-Jadaan could not witness this day which he had predicted and played a big role in bringing about.

For Hammorabi the death of Zarqawi is "very good news":

Zarqawi without doubts went into the bottom of the Hell with blood of many innocent children, women and men in his dirty hands.

There were celebrations going on now in the holly city of Najaf and Kerbala. On the other hands there are sadness and shock among his allies in the region and abroad like Al-Jazeera Qatari TV and other Arab pro-terrorists thugs.

Zarqawi and his aides simply went to Hell and this is the worst fate for any one like them.

The anti-American Roads to Iraq reported on the TV coverage in Beirut.

“The team didn’t accept to show images and pictures of the interviews, so the image above from Al-Rousha rock in Beirut”

The whole day I was with TV team covering the news of the death of Zarqawi, by asking people’s opinions.

The orders came from above that the opinions must be “pro-occupation” (speaking about the freedom of speech).

We just asked pedestrians on the streets, from 30 opinions of different fraction of the Lebanese society only three opinions were pro-occupation” and the rest were something like this:

“They are the Americans who create Zarqawi, and now they don’t need this myth anymore”.

“As long as the occupation exists then there will be many other Zarqawis”.

Best opinion I heard today was:

“The Americans announce the death of Zarqawi because they wanted to show support for Iraq’s new government, but Zarqawism is not dead they left the option open to use another name or names“.

Neurotic Iraqi Wife heard the news on her car radio.

I was at the traffic light, in my car on the way to the furniture store....Lit a cigarette and was listening to radio Sawa, when the the first headline was "Zarqawi was killed in Iraq"...OMG... The cig magically slipped through my fingers onto the car's floor...Shit Shit shit...the cab driver behind me started beeping, the lights have turned green and my head is down trying to find where the darn cig fell.....by the time i found it, a crescendo of beeping began and the lights turned red...hehe...This time, I got my mobile phone out and called my brother to see if the news I just heard was true...You never know these days, I dont trust news agencies no more...So I needed another person to tell me if my ears didnt mock me...And YES YES YES, that low life criminal is gone....gone from the face of the earth...Gone from Iraq....

Joy in many quarters, elsewhere a lot of silence.  There is hope tempered by reality.  The fight is not over, not by a long shot.