A bit of good news, anyway, assuming it holds up.
Well, non-bad news. It might be good, or it might be meaningless.
It will have about as much effect as killing Qusay and Uday did. We have this bizarre fixation on personalizing conflicts. Myself, I doubt that Zarqawi's group was really responsible for everything that has been assigned to them. The insurgency looks awfully DIY to me. Knocking out this or that guy who likes to get in front of the cameras won't lessen the violence to any significant degree.
But it should make the Shi'a happy.
Yeah, mostly I just wanted to make the 'how many legs' joke.
Chris Albritton says it's possibly a very big deal, representing a split between the Ba'athist and Jihadist elements of the insurgency.
I agree with 3, but it's still a bit of good news -- if Zarqawi was going to kill a few people in the upcoming days, they won't be dead, and probably it's a good thing for him to be dead anyway (like Uday and Qusay). Better to have him in custody probably but that wasn't going to happen. But you're right that it ain't changing the strategic picture one bit.
Also, you've now insulated yourself from the inevitable "The Left hasn't posted about killing Zarqawi because they hate America!!1!" posts on the warblogs.
No I haven't, I was unserious about it. I think that still leaves me hating America in their eyes. Because, really, what does it mean to love America if you aren't lusting for veins in your teeth.
No, sorry, there is no insulation from right-wing slander. The palpable untruth of the left's, or anybody's regrets about Zarqawi's demise won't prevent it. Did anyone see the cartoon of "the left" as a dog lying on its back laughing at the exposure of the Haditha massacre?
I sort of meant "insulated" as in "in your heart you know you didn't do it." IDP, I didn't see that cartoon; lovely how some people think exposing atrocities is worse than committing them.
exposing s/b condemning, really, since I was thinking also of the Amnesty International flapette.
The people on the news this morning acted all shocked that this didn't cause the international stock markets to rise. I mean, yes, it's good news and they predict it may help oil prices but their attitudes were so obnoxious. It's was like "You ungrateful foreigners. When we tell your market to jump, you JUMP, DAMMIT!"
The insurgency is on its last leg, they said. Yeah, but it had spares.
I'm offering a cautious w00t. I'm not informed enough to gauge the long-term effects, but it's kickass that we actually killed a bad guy, even if another bad guy steps up.
I believe the correct answer (not the real answer necessarily) will be one- Wasn't the argument against Saddam that he allowed Zarqawi to come to Baghdad to have his leg amputated? Two legs = no amputation = no connection to Saddam. One leg good, two legs bad.
It will be great if this matters, but I think the realist fear about invading Iraq was always sectarian violence and regional war. Most of the evidence suggests that we've got the first, and I think most experts still think the second remains a real possibility. Neither of these risks is going to go away in weeks or months. It's going to take years, and maybe decades, to put both back in Pandora's Box.
This morning I finally saw that video clip of The Man From Zarqwa handling that gun that made the rounds about a month or so ago. He seemed to have two legs, or if one was a prosthetic, he was very agile with it.
I think the writers will bring back Zarqwari (or his son) back at the latest by issue 120, since he's obviously the reader's favorite and the writers have so far been totally unable to concoct an issue worth a shit without Z. I mean, what are they gonna do now? Giant typewriters? A Saddam jailbreak, maybe followed by Saddam sneaking into the White House with green kryptonite Wild Turkey? If they had any sense they'd bring a female Islamic superterrorist with enourmous titties. 'Silicone of the Prophet'?
Also, since they fired the previous editor, and got this new guy now, maybe they'll stop having continuity problems and figure out how to explain the leg thing. They ought to just fire the writer too, but I guess he's a favorite of the publisher or something.
ash
['Bring back the Red Skull!']
Soccer! It's the world's sport. And that Beckham, he sure has some crazy hair, hmmm?
And much as I hate Brent Musberger, perhaps I should be happy that he's not going to have Jackarute! on the sidelines inthe final.
... and Michael Owen is subbed out, hm.
Was Crouch's yellow for arguing, for for the elbow with the header?
Yeah, but, how do you know that? Anyway... nice shot from Lampard.
Okay, so unless Paraguay actually makes one of their final little passes connect around the English goal, this mean... that the Paraguay-Sweden game is gonna be a must-watch, hm?
You know, arthegall, there already is a thread for soccer. I kind of think that if multiple threads get used for this purpose, it diminishes the likelihood that someone might come back and comment on something else related to the post, or you know, not related, but not soccer, or that if someone did comment amid the soccer commentary, other people would see it, since it would be amid a lot of soccer talk. Could we maybe keep the soccer commentary in one space?
"Paraguay is known to ... pack things in," says Dave O'Brien.
"ATM," I shout...
Tia, I'm sorry. I'll go move over there...
I could open up a special thread just for you and the other soccer fans.
Tia, the solution is to post a soccer thread.
Don't worry about it Tia -- I'd rather just watch the games, maybe. I don't really think there needs to be a soccer thread anyway, half the fun was sorta taking over old threads as a kind of "spontaneous change of subject." But if that's actually annoying to you, then I understand, it's totally cool...
I think a "soccer thread" would kinda drain the interest, but that's just me maybe...