This has been an ongoing effort since Dec. 2003. . . . After the air strikes, CoalitionForces launched 17 raids against terrorist targets in Baghdad "within hours" of identifying Zarqawi, uncovering a "treasure trove" of intelligence information. The targets were previously being exploited to track Zarqawi's movements. Now the Coalition is pushing rapidly to roll-up the al Qaeda network in Iraq.

It was a multinational Coalition effort, and Iraqi police were first on the scene.

Zarqawi was at an isolated safe house 8 km west of Baqouba. Six people were with him, including a woman and a child. At the time of this press conference, only two had been identified.

Zarqawi had planned for his demise and has appinted a successor, who will probably instigate violence over the next few days to assert his authority. Speculation is that this person is the Egyptian a-Musari (sp?).

A reminder of what this murderous creep managed to accomplish:

Zarqawi contributed enormously to the wrecking of Iraq's experiment in democratic federalism. He was able to help ensure that the Iraqi people did not have one single day of respite between 35 years of war and fascism, and the last three-and-a-half years of misery and sabotage. He chose his targets with an almost diabolical cunning, destroying the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad (and murdering the heroic envoy Sérgio Vieira de Melo) almost before it could begin operations, and killing the leading Shiite Ayatollah Hakim outside his place of worship in Najaf. His decision to declare a jihad against the Shiite population in general, in a document of which Weaver (on no evidence) doubts the authenticity, has been the key innovation of the insurgency: applying lethal pressure to the most vulnerable aspect of Iraqi society. And it has had the intended effect, by undermining Grand Ayatollah Sistani and helping empower Iranian-backed Shiite death squads.

Zarqawi, we are told, is the monster who personally hacked off the head of Nicholas Berg, whose screams still echo in our heads, a young American entrepreneur who just wanted to do something good in Iraq. Zarqawi’s victims include British aid worker Margaret Hassan, 59, who just wanted to do something good in Iraq. Sergio de Mello and 20 others at the United Nations compound in Baghdad, who just wanted to do something good in Iraq.

Hundreds and perhaps thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi soldiers and police -- Zarqawi particularly liked targeting unarmed and helpless police recruits -- who just wanted to do something good in Iraq. Countless Iraqi women, children, shopkeepers, old men. People who just wanted to live in Iraq. He wanted to kill them all. But that wasn’t enough blood for Zarqawi. He even sent suicide bombers home to blow up a wedding in Jordan, the native land he had become estranged from, where he was also wanted. Zarqawi, an Islamo-fascist of the first order, a murderous zealot who wanted to push his campaign into Europe and the United States, who wanted to supplant Osama bin Laden, because his interest was not in a free and prosperous Iraq. That was just the market niche he clumsily and fatally tried to exploit. His interest was in a global Islamic state. A Zarqawisphere.