Thursday, May 08, 2008
Bad guy down
[UPDATE 6:30 AM EDT Friday: Never mind. But the brilliant analysis still holds!]
The Associated Press serves up an almost startlingly optimistic lede:
Iraqi police commandos captured the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq in a raid in the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi officials said Thursday, in what could mark a significant blow to the Sunni insurgency in its last urban stronghold.
When the A.P. starts using phrases like "significant blow" and "last urban stronghold" it rocks my world.
Anyway, I sure hope he does not end up in Gitmo. That would be terrible.
This is of a piece with the enormous progress made against Al Qaeda in Iraq in the last year. Before and after pictures below, compiled from CSIS's enormous compendium of Iraq PowerPoint slides:
Of course, al Qaeda has pretty good "corporate governance" and there is usually a successor waiting in line when a top commander is caught or killed. That does not mean that al Qaeda can sustain infinite losses in its leadership. Each time we or the government of Iraq creates a hole in al Qaeda's organization, it needs to shuffle around its command and admit somebody new. That creates a new opportunity for infiltration, and that is the key to defeating any insurgency.
MORE: Richard Fernandez has more, including the same comparison with the maps (except that he has March 2008 data and better formatting, which should come as no surprise to any of us).
4 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu May 08, 09:30:00 PM:
The key phrase is probably "Iraqi POLICE commandos". That makes is acceptable to use the language of triumphalism.
By , at
Fri May 09, 01:10:00 AM:
I realy got so tired of the terms the liberal left-wing news media was using like for shot with a gun and killed the term GUNNED DOWN or a armed robber GUNMAN i just no longer watch the talking heads and i hardly even read the liberal news rags you know what a bird i am SQUAWK SQUAWK
By 
Georg Felis, at
Fri May 09, 10:23:00 AM:
Communications analysis over the next few days may turn over a few rocks. Think of how many unguarded phone calls get made when news like this comes out, and various Thugs of Importance all call their boss. Too bad we can’t listen to them due to certain individuals in Washington.
By SR, at
Sat May 10, 12:54:00 AM:
Oh, they are listening somewhere. Count on it.
