Zarqawi wasn’t found dead

June 9, 2006

The WaPo included an interesting tidbit towards the end of its report on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death.

Several discrepancies emerged in various accounts of Wednesday’s events. Police and witnesses at the scene told a Washington Post special correspondent that Zarqawi was only wounded in the attack and was whisked away by U.S. forces, dying in their custody. [Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a U.S. military spokesman.] said he was killed instantly.

As it turns out, the initial Pentagon report was wrong.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was alive on a stretcher when U.S. troops first reached him after an airstrike near Baquba, a U.S. military spokesman said Friday.

Iraq’s most wanted terrorist mumbled something indistinguishable and tried to move before he died, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Bill Caldwell told reporters.

“Zarqawi did survive the airstrike,” Caldwell said. “We did in fact see him alive.” Caldwell said he did not know how many minutes al-Zarqawi survived and that he was the only person of the five other people killed by the strike to survive the blast.

Asked whether Zarqawi was shot after U.S. ground troops arrived, Caldwell said he could not give a definitive answer based on what he had read in the latest official U.S. military report on the event. “I’ll go back and specifically ask that,” he said.

Does this matter? Not really. There was probably some breakdown in communication yesterday, not an intentional effort to deceive. Still, for those inclined to suspect the worst, the discrepancy might raise eyebrows. As Slate’s Eric Umansky responded to the competing reports, “Care for a tinfoil hat?”

I’d gotten the impression that he had been found alive.

I doubt we shot him. Why bother. He was so beat up from the bombing that he was unlikely to live without heoric medical intervention.

Such intervention obviously not being forthcoming.

And frankly, I would laugh at anyone who suggested that we should make the effort. He knew nothing about the location of Osama or Zawahiri, and we probably already had good intelligence about his network in Iraq.

And he certainly did not deserve to live.

  • I still don’t see how, after two 500 lb bombs reduced that building to a mound of rubble, any bodies came out intact, let alone alive. And I don’t understand how, within minutes of ker-blooey, we got in there, found all those still-whole bodies, got a cleaned up photograph of Zarqawi (hair and beard intact), enlarged the photographs, found matching mattes and wooden frames … all in few hours. This in a city under constant threat of explosions and in which they can barely get electricity for hours at a time. I smell a rat somewhere.

  • “I smell a rat somewhere.” – Ed Stephan

    That would be our having Zarqawi and his spirtual leader already on hand, and then deciding to bomb a building and plant the bodies there?

  • Ed:

    #1, that was a coordinated strike on Zarqawi, they didn’t just happen to have the airplanes up and got the info and then diverted the mission. They knew where he was and when he would be there, had the F-16s ready, with the spec ops troops outside. Looks like they took a page out of the IDF’s book about going after terrorists and assassinating them with F-16s (which dropped JDAMs).

    Of course, they might have wanted to look a little further into the IDF’s playbook, since the Israelis have proven time and again how profitable and effective it is to keep killing off generation after generation of leaders – it makes the organization so amenable to coming around for negotiations later. (/snark)

  • I hope Zarqawi did survive long enough to see the faces of American soldiers. I hope that was the last thing he saw before he arrived in Hell.

    Why does a guy who cuts off people’s heads on videotape have a “spiritual adviser” and what the hell kind of advice would this adviser have?

  • I guess I’m in the tinfoil hat camp on this, too, though historically I lend little credence to most conspiracy theories. Just seems to me like nothing about this war and administration passes the smell test, so I’m inclined to doubt.

    The military has a history of revising major stories about this war fairly often, so it’ll probably take a while before the “truth” is known.

    I just think it’s better to capture and prosecute than to outright kill. It makes us look more civilized and creates less martyrs.

  • I’m with doubtful. From Jessica Lynch onwards, very little about this war, as presented by the media, has been spot-on. Frequently there have been fabrications, lies, distortions. There have been times, in fact, when I’ve even wondered if Zarqawi (at least, the loathsome, evil Zarqawi presented in the media) even existed. Certainly, he’s been such a convenient monster for Bush & Co. that if he didn’t exist, they would have had to invent him.

  • I understand that confusion is par for the course in these types of situations, but of all the times to double, triple, and quadruple check the facts so nothing gets misstated this was it. We aren’t talking about no one. We are talking about Zarqawi, the man this administration has held up (wrongly) to be the crux of the problems in Iraq. They would have had to know that getting the facts wrong on this high profile target would be a mistake.

  • Last month, Zarqawi released what was believed to be his first video. According to the AP story, the background in one of the scenes “startingly” resembled Anbar, Iraq’s western province. AP went on to speculate that the release of the video increased the risk of Zarqawi being captured.

    So last month, we all got a good look at what Zarqawi looks like now. This month, he is killed in the province of Anbar after tippping off the US military as to his whereabouts. We all get a good look at a dead Zarqawi who looks just like he did in last month’s video.

    Zarqawi sure was cooperative for a world-class terrorist.

  • Caldwell: “We found him dead”

    Lt. Snuffy: “He’s not quite dead”

    Caldwell: “We found him fatally wounded”

    Lt. Snuffy: “He’s getting better”

    Caldwell (motioning soldier with club): “We thought he would survive, but suddenly he felt the icy hand of death upon him….”

    “Ummph!!”

    Lt. Snuffy: “Oh, he’s died”

    thanks for the inspiration, bubba

  • Fox was reporting this morning that he fell off the stretcher when the American troops arrived. He died soon after. I presume this fall was taken as an escape attempt, and he was beaten to death.

  • That helps explain why he left such a decent-looking corpse.

    Why the ghoulish detail of this man’s death? Sure he’s a piece of trash and undeserving of our sympathy, but the whole “war of civilizations” the right-wing (and some left) hawks spout would seem to suggest we treat their dead with a tad more dignity then they do ours. Trotting out gruesome (or not so) photos of Zarqawi and the Hussein brothers doesn’t seem like a great way to “win the hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people. At this point it seems we’re a half-step away from collecting scalps.

  • I like prm’s post.

    He is absolutely right.
    It is about scalps.

    This sort of gloating doesn’t befit a country founded on humanitarian ideals.

    Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice have once again proven themselves to be no better than terrorists.

    On a lighter side, from one of the links:

    A captured Zarqawi acolyte reportedly told the military that the chubby terrorist hung out with a spiritual adviser, whom the military then began tracking.

    A fat slob who need a spiritual advisor…
    He be right at home in this country.

  • doubtful writes: “I just think it’s better to capture and prosecute than to outright kill. It makes us look more civilized and creates less martyrs.”

    After Abu Ghraib and all that’s come since, sadly it’s too late for that I’m afraid.

    Personally, I don’t care how this murderer died. Good riddance to inhuman rubbish.

  • Actually Frak is right:

    “It makes us look more civilized and creates less martyrs.“

    Parading Zarqawi’s bloody image on the telly is only going to galvanize “his base.”

    No doubt, yesterday was a “red-letter” day for Al Qaida recruitment.

    Of course, Bush and “his base” don’t realize this.
    They don’t understand that for every terrorist you kill with a bomb three more are born.

    In other words: Zarqawi himself is meaningless.
    Three new leaders are ready to step into the breach.

    That’s why I’ve written prior:

    The only natural genius G. W. Bush has is in creating new terrorists.

    In fact, Bush is the world’s best expert at creating folks who hate America.

    That’s why G. W. Bush is America’s own worst enemy.
    That’s why he is a miserable failure.

  • … for those inclined to suspect the worst …

    In the last five years I’ve learned to suspect the worst. Reality usually turns out to be even worse than that.

    • Comments are closed.