Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi Killed in Air Raid
 

Jun 8 632

The prophet Mohammed, founder of Islam, dies in Mecca. One can safely assume he is at this very moment reclining on a soft couch somewhere in Paradise, being serviced by a high-bosomed virgin with dark eyes.

This was brought up in the random political thoughts thread, but I certainly agree that it is worthy of its own thread.

There is thought out there that all this means is many more will rise to take his place. I disagree. To repeat what I said in the random thread -

What al-Zarqawi did was give al Qaida organization. With bin Laden in hiding and only putting out an audio or video pep talk every three months or so, I think it creates a power struggle within the organization. I think many terrorists will want to be the next al-Zarqawi and it may lead to a certain amount of in fighting.

I have no doubt it will be spun as a non victory in certain circles, but a blood thirsty islamofascist terrorist leader is dead. This is a good thing. And I am particularly happy that he has found the afterlife contains no 72 virgins for him.

To add to that a bit, I don't care about the whole martyr thing. I don't buy for a moment that the terrorists are happy (as a recent press release from them seems to imply) that he is dead. He was their leader. Likewise, it is a huge boost to the morale of US troops and also to the infant Iraqi government.

The Iraqi police sure seemed happy he's dead (not as a martyr, but a rotting bag of flesh).

Perhaps scaeagles would be surprised to learn that I am not going round in one of those circles to spin that this is a non-victorious thing. I exhault in Zarqawi's death and I congratulate the U.S. armed forces for taking him out of our plane of existence.


For all the disdain I have for the U.S. military in Iraq, it is a pittance of loathing in comparison to that which I hold for the death squads, kidnappers, bandits and islamo-facists who are responsible for the lion's share of civilian deaths in that country.

By killing him, did we make him a martyr and a role model for other wannabees out there?
I'm interested to see what kind of impact this has on the war.
I can't bring myself to be happy about someone's death. It isn't in me. But I'm not sad, either.

I can- and I am not ashamed of it either.

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” ~ Tolkien

So is Zarqawi "Gollum" to Bin Laden's "Sauron"?

Good ridance.

What remains to be seen, in my estimation, isn't so much whether others will rise to replace him, but whether that's already happened. There's been an assumption for a while that, while Zarqawi's the most visible figure, he hasn't had direct control and input into the insurgency for quite some time. Rather, it's several separate groups with their own motives that have all united behind the same short-term motive, getting rid of American troups. Sadaam loyalists, Al-Quaida, anti-Shia groups, etc. If that's the case, I fear Zarqawi's death will be but a small hicup in the violence. I sincerely hope I'm wrong.

Interesting analogy, but as Gollum played upon deception as to his agenda, I wouldn't compare al-Zarqawi to him. His agenda was clear and did not rely on deception to achieve it.

Unless he was really, really good at deception so I didn't notice.

You are correct, I was thinking more along the lines of eliminating someone who may have lead you to a bigger fish, but that probably wouldn't have happened in this case.

Gonna try and sell me on some idea that this peice of filfth had any other purpose to fulfill other than the one he pursued with blood thirsty dediction?

Sorry - no.

My impression was that Zarqawi's true goal - or at least one of the major objectives - was sectarian warfare. That now appears well-established, and I don't know that his death will have much impact on that. However, he also appeared to love the media spotlight, and I'm not sure there's a ready replacement for the figurehead-everyone-recognizes role.

If this slows down the islamic terroists murdering innocent Iraquis and kidnapping of innocent reportrs, aid workers and truck drivers, all the better. If similar intelligence can finally help the military locate and obliterate Bin Laden, I'm all for it. That's what started this whole mess in the first place.

I'm unsure about that, but I get to ride alongside Aragorn.
:)

Don't you mean behind him?:D

Even better.
:D

I am not shedding any tears that he has passed but as to whether this improves the situation over there, I have a feeling that not much will change. I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong.

Today, the first day without him around, 37 have been killed in Iraq. Those people certainly aren't benefitting from this.

I actually expected violence to increase today and for the next few days.

My reasoning is that I would suspect there would be some intelligence they can get from the rubble, or at least associates of Zarqawi might believe that, and therefore any existing plans for attacks would be carried out as soon as possible to prevent them from being thwarted.

Well, that didn't take long. Of course, Pete Stark of CA doesn't speak for democrats as a whole, but he seems to think the whole thing was orchestrated to divert attention from certain problems.

^Almost as predictable as some on the Right proclaiming this clown's death is the greatest thing since George W Bush invented democracy.


Yawn. I'll pop the champagne when word reaches us that Bin Laden has died - peacefully, in his sleep - of old age.

I watched the Berg beheading footage. (I shouldn't have.) Here is a quote from Mr. Berg, the vicitim's father:

Source (The whole interview is interesting.)

This is how I feel today.

"How can a human being be glad that another human being is dead?"

It's a good question.

I can come at this from a completely different angle. My mom died a slow painful death from lupus. When she died, I was glad.

I will not rag on Berg due to his loss, but I believe most of what he is saying is misguided. Sadly, I must say that my dear Ann Coulter has crossed that line a bit too far for me to stand by her this time, with her cruel criticism of some 9/11 widows, as vocal as they may be.

There are certain things you just don't do.

Glad she was not suffering any longer or just glad to be rid of her?

I suspect you were glad for the former.

Nice to know that's possible ;)

A sad confessional, but I have to admit it was both. Much more the former, certainly, but a kid who grew up his whole life with a sick mom and lots of extra responsibilities can't help but feel a bit relieved when it's over.

I think this is very wise. If every human being on earth had this attitude, we wouldn't be in this crappy state.

With apologies to the regulars of that thread. I do not go in there, so I did not know it had been previously brought up.

No problem. Certain major issues - and this is certainly major - deserve their own thread. I'm glad you started it.

Ya know, this is one I hadn't thought of when I had queasy feelings about the rise of the omnibus threads.

I understand the Sooooooo thread in the Lounge is a lot of fun. But it didn't attract my attention till it was 5 pages long and, by then, I didn't feel like jumping in. It grew to a mega-page behemoth, and I know I can read or post in it if I wanted to ... but I just get this feeling that the gist of that ever-changing thread has passed me by.


If people who haven't gotten involved in a thread by page 10 are never going to get involved at page 30, a lot of people around here are going to miss all the political discussion ... and likely all of the movie discussion (what with the rapid ascendency of the Movie Musings thread).


So what's next? Will the LoT devolve to one giant thread per forum? How many more people might be put off by a 78-page thread?

I jump in and out of the Soooo thread- I like it, and it stops redundancy when it comes to the inevitable "I'm Bored" or "Whatcha Doing?" threads. So what if a topic is mentioned elsewhere? If you look over the thread, it's all over the place- no one gets stuck on anything. I think the idea of one consistant thread, especially a relatively naturally occuring one, is kind of cool.

I find some of those threads to be more like natural conversations and ebb and flow and drift. Sometimes you just want to yammer about something and it's not really worth starting a whole thread over.

Plus, then drift isn't a problem. Like talking about thread mechanics in a ding dong the witch is dead thread.

I admit that large threads are intimidating and if I wasn't in on it from the beginning then I typically don't enter it. Too much to catch up on.

But sometimes people just want to post a random thought that isn't worthy of it's own thread.

Surely we don't want a 1000 post limit per thread like another site has?

Omnibus, good analogy.

Listen here, Snarky Snarkenstein :D, I find it against the flow of things on this board to say that one should or shouldn't discuss things in a certain way. No one is saying that one can't start a thread about politics or movies because there are two general threads about those subjects already. I just didn't find it necessary to start a whole thread to say that I watched 'Bringing Up Baby' last night. So I thought, well we should have a Sooo thread for movies.

The Sooo thread, the movies thread and the politics thread are very free flowing and often very casual. Like a lounge.

I tried to steer very clear of saying we "should" this or that. I'm mindful of my -hahahaha- mod status when talking about such things, and the last thing we want to do around here is quash the freeflowingness of the group's marvelousity.

I was just pointing out a potential problem that was raised by Kevy, and which I also feel to some degree ... as - apparently - do others:
On the other hand, scaeagles also had this wise thing to say:
I guess that's the trick then, isn't it? This here thread is a great example of a distinct event that someone deemed threadworthy. I applaud that, but how often will it happen vs. how often someone will not want to tread for the first time into a 28-page thread?


I'm going to see Cars tonight. It's a big, new movie ... Disney related, to boot. But I'm not sure if I'll bother to start a Beatnik thread about it when there's already the All Movies thread over in the Lounge.


Anyways, I's is just sayin'

See, Cars deserves it's own thread. Wathcing Bringing Up Baby may not.

Oh, I don't know.

I jusy went gay all of a sudden!

Why is Asta in that pic? ;)

That dog is in many a film.