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"You are correct! Until we kill or capture Abu Mussab el-Zarqawi, the instability will remain."

IMHO, I believe if we nail him and show his body with a few holes in the head whatever, to the world to see, we and the Iraqis shall still have a little problem removing all his current mid and higher ups, as well as those Saddamist most likely still being financed by Izzit Ibrahim el-Douri and his army Intel and remaining Fedeeyan etc., not to meantion various Sunni Islamist groups fighting on religious grounds, and of course the various elements of the Shiite groups with ties to Iranian influences. I don't think they are all just going to go away. They must be searched out and either captured or killed as has been the standard practice. So it is imperivitive we keep building up the Iraqi forces to finish the job, so we can get out, leaving a small footprint in the way of ground/air logistic and continued training, spook shops both military wise as well as CIA, and contingents of in house advisors both from a commercial as well as a political viewpoint. But surely things are going well in a lot of respects. It will be interesting to see if there is a stark drop off of suicide bombers in mostly the capital once most of the North Central Al Anbar towns along the Euphrates in the Qaim area (current Marine/Iraqi ops) wind down. Of course we have not heard much about any ops taken place within the Bibil province (triangle of death) area south of Baghdad recently. Perhaps the Iraqi are doing a 24/7 coverage to the extent they finally are paralizing the Ali Babba effort in this area. Guess time will tell.