The day before his encounter with two 500 pound laser guided bombs, wisdom at Strategy Page had it that Zarqawi was scheduled for martyrdom.
Given that Zarqawi has become a loose cannon and that his actions are handicapping Al Qaeda's efforts, it seems reasonable to expect that an accident may befall him at some point in the near future. If handled right it can be made to look like he went out in a blaze of glory fighting American troops or that he was foully murdered. Either way, al Qaeda gets rid of a problem and gains another "martyr."
And then when he turned up on a slab so soon after their prediction I concluded they must have been right. Well, they've reconsidered that assessment at the Page. Given the large number of raids and terrorist kills, and the wealth of captured information, they now think infiltration of al Qaeda is more likely what lead to his capture.
There were so many new targets, that about a third of the raids were carried out by Iraqi forces alone. This suggests that there's something more going on than a careful perusal of the documents and laptops captured with him. It takes time to sift the docs and bytes, and time to coordinate that many raids. Even by American standards, that's very quick response to recently captured information, unless they already knew enough so that they could have the ops ready to go as soon as Zarqawi was popped.
This suggests a traitor or traitors in or close to Zawqawi's inner circle. It also suggests that the al Qaeda leadership probably did not decide to get rid of Zawqawi, as bin Laden and his close confidants would certainly not have wanted the entire network rolled up.
That would be something to file under good news.
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