Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has reportedly been killed.
"Reportedly" is the ultimate journalist's weasel-word, translating roughly into "somebody said this, heck if I know if it's true or not."
I'm fairly confident that this morning's good news is true, but there's also good reason for skepticism. The officials reporting this news have a dubious track record. For example, you may recall that "Chemical" Ali Hassan al-Majid was reportedly killed several times back during the early weeks of the invasion of Iraq.
You may also recall what these officials told us about Zarqawi earlier. They said they had confirmed that he had a leg amputated in Baghdad in 2002.
The man who was reportedly killed in an airstrike yesterday had two whole legs.
It's also important to remember how Abu Musab al-Zarqawi first came to worldwide attention. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell made him famous during his disgraceful Feb. 2003 speech before the United Nations. Zarqawi, Powell said, was operating a terrorist base in the no-fly zone to the north of Saddam-controlled Iraq.
This news prompted more than one member of Congress to ask why such a terrorist base was still operating, unmolested, in the crosshairs of America's military in the U.S.-patrolled no-fly zone.
The answer, it turns out, was staggeringly cynical:
In early 2003, Zarqawi was too useful to be killed or captured or even contained. He was a key piece in the Bush administration's "justification for war," and so he was, deliberately, permitted to go about his business.
His business — as we've seen in hideous, bloody detail over the past three years — was mayhem, indiscriminate death, the slaughter of civilians and American troops.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has reportedly been stopped from adding to his list of victims. This is good news. It would've been much better news if he had been stopped sooner when we had the chance but — deliberately — chose to let him continue.
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