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The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
The Atlantic Monthly ^ | July/August 2006 | Mary Anne Weaver

Posted on 06/09/2006 8:28:59 PM PDT by tbird5

On a cold and blustery evening in December 1989, Huthaifa Azzam, the teenage son of the legendary Jordanian-Palestinian mujahideen leader Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, went to the airport in Peshawar, Pakistan, to welcome a group of young men. All were new recruits, largely from Jordan, and they had come to fight in a fratricidal civil war in neighboring Afghanistan—an outgrowth of the CIA-financed jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet occupation there.

The men were scruffy, Huthaifa mused as he greeted them, and seemed hardly in battle-ready form. Some had just been released from prison; others were professors and sheikhs. None of them would prove worth remembering—except for a relatively short, squat man named Ahmad Fadhil Nazzal al-Khalaylah.

He would later rename himself Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Once one of the most wanted men in the world, for whose arrest the United States offered a $25 million reward, al-Zarqawi was a notoriously enigmatic figure—a man who was everywhere yet nowhere. I went to Jordan earlier this year, three months before he was killed by a U.S. airstrike in early June, to find out who he really was, and to try to understand the role he was playing in the anti-American insurgency in Iraq. I also hoped to get a sense of how his generation—the foreign fighters now waging jihad in Iraq—compare with the foreign fighters who twenty years ago waged jihad in Afghanistan.

(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: abdullaazzam; abdullahazzam; abumusaabalzarqawi; abumusabalzarqawi; ahmadalkhalayla; ahmadalkhalaylah; alkhalayla; alzarqawi; anneweaver; atlanticmonthly; azzam; fadhilalkhalayla; fadhilalkhalaylah; huthaifaazzam; khalayleh; maryanneweaver; maryaweaver; maryweaver; nazzalalkhalayla; nazzalalkhalaylah; weaver; zarqawi
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1 posted on 06/09/2006 8:29:00 PM PDT by tbird5
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To: tbird5

Zarq was born in October of 1966. If life begins at 40, he'll never know it. Good riddance.


2 posted on 06/09/2006 8:35:25 PM PDT by edpc
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To: tbird5
Amman, where he is at work on a doctorate in classical Arabic literature...

Amman, friend of Z. : talk about an empty and useless degree from college
3 posted on 06/09/2006 8:36:54 PM PDT by Falconspeed (Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. Robert Louis Stevenson)
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To: edpc
I don't know how to post a video, but this is a link to the USAF's video of the attack on the safe house. Click here
4 posted on 06/09/2006 8:43:19 PM PDT by Former Fetus (fetuses are 100% pro-life, they just don't vote yet!)
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To: Blue Jays
AMF!
5 posted on 06/09/2006 8:45:36 PM PDT by Blue Jays (Rock Hard, Ride Free)
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To: tbird5
RE: in a car bombing outside Shia Islam’s holy shrine in Najaf.

The suicide bomber in that attack was Yassin Jarad, from Zarqa. He was al-Zarqawi’s father-in-law.

Z. used his wifes father to cause the "killing of over a hundred people". That's just downright evil.
6 posted on 06/09/2006 8:46:24 PM PDT by Falconspeed (Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. Robert Louis Stevenson)
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To: edpc; tbird5; Falconspeed; Tony Snow
Something that wasn't reported by the media:

The soldiers brought Zarqawi to the division surgeon. As he lay on the table, the doc pulled out his stethoscope and listened to Zarq's chest.

After a moment or two, the doc shook his head and said, "Zarq has passed away."

"Are you sure?" said the soldiers? We need him for interrogation!

"Yes, I am sure. He's dead," he replied.

"How can you be so sure," one said! "I mean, you haven't done any testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something."

The doc rolled his eyes, turned around and left the room, and returned a few moments later with a black Labrador Retriever.

As the soldiers looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed Zarq from top to bottom. He then looked at the doc and shook his head.

The doc patted the dog and took it out, and returned a few moments later with a cat.

The cat jumped up on the table and also sniffed delicately at Zarq from head to foot. The cat sat back on it's haunches, shook its head, and strolled out of the room.

The vet looked at the soldiers and said, as I said, this is most definitely, 100% certifiably, a dead Zarqawi."

Then the doc then told the soldiers that this would cost them a case of Jack Daniels for wasting his time.

The soldiers, said, "A frigging case of Jack Daniels, just for you to tell us this mofo is dead?"

"The doc shrugged, "I'm sorry. If you'd taken my word for it, a fifth of JD would have been sufficient, but because of the Lab Report and the Cat Scan, it's now a whole case!

7 posted on 06/09/2006 8:50:20 PM PDT by Enterprise (Let's not enforce laws that are already on the books, let's just write new laws we won't enforce.)
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To: tbird5

His life wasn't nearly short enough.


8 posted on 06/09/2006 8:52:09 PM PDT by Nachoman (I love greasy old bolt guns.)
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To: tbird5

My cousin, a psychologist, believes he took sexual gratification in sadistic beheadings and all that. In any event, what a perverted 'religion' conjures up -- much less adulates -- such reptilian behavior?


9 posted on 06/09/2006 8:54:16 PM PDT by dodger
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To: Enterprise
Bravo. Sometimes a doctor's opinion is worth more than expensive tests. Z. is dead. The soldiers are real-life heroes.

And a movie should be made about the soldiers' detective work to find Z.
10 posted on 06/09/2006 8:56:39 PM PDT by Falconspeed (Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. Robert Louis Stevenson)
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To: tbird5

For me, and I think a lot of others, the best thing about his life is that he didn't die immediately after the bombs hit, but had a few moments of consciousness to realize that he was in the hands of the US military and to experience the terror that must have brought.....


11 posted on 06/09/2006 8:57:28 PM PDT by Intolerant in NJ
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To: dodger
"what a perverted 'religion' conjures up -- much less adulates -- such reptilian behavior?"

I think they prescribe viagra for reptile dysfunction.

12 posted on 06/09/2006 8:58:25 PM PDT by Enterprise (Let's not enforce laws that are already on the books, let's just write new laws we won't enforce.)
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To: Falconspeed

That would be an outstanding movie if someone like Mel Gibson did it!!!!


13 posted on 06/09/2006 9:00:00 PM PDT by Enterprise (Let's not enforce laws that are already on the books, let's just write new laws we won't enforce.)
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To: tbird5

I was wondering, does anyone know exactly what munition they dropped on him?

I was thinking that maybe they used the concrete bombs, pretty accurate but doesn't wake the neighbors.


14 posted on 06/09/2006 9:02:31 PM PDT by TC Rider (The United States Constitution © 1791. All Rights Reserved.)
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To: Intolerant in NJ

I'd love to know how long Zarq lived from the time the bomb struck until he breathed his miserable last. I hope his suffering felt like an eternity.


15 posted on 06/09/2006 9:06:09 PM PDT by RedRover
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To: All

So if his body was retrieved, they can now give him his well-deserved pigskin funeral, face down, feet facing Mecca, right?


16 posted on 06/09/2006 9:07:36 PM PDT by Bazooka (Just say what you think. They hate our guts anyway.)
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To: tbird5

The author's propaganda objectives are certainly clear enough...


17 posted on 06/09/2006 9:11:12 PM PDT by Zeppo
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To: RedRover; tbird5

> I'd love to know how long Zarq lived from the time the
> bomb struck until he breathed his miserable last.
> I hope his suffering felt like an eternity.

Probably about as long as many Israeli bus bombing victims.
They can look fine externally, and perhaps even walk, but
they are dead people walking. Even with immediate surgical
care, they are doomed. Z-man got a full dose of what his
Pali pals do to innocent people.


18 posted on 06/09/2006 9:17:28 PM PDT by Boundless
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To: dodger
My cousin, a psychologist, believes he took sexual gratification in sadistic beheadings

Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner. His acts of violence were counter productive to his cause. They were for his own gratification. He was a serial killer that thought he had the blessing of Allah.

19 posted on 06/09/2006 9:21:55 PM PDT by cpdiii (Socialism is popular with the ruling class. It gives legitimacy to tyranny and despotism.)
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To: RedRover
I hope his suffering felt like an eternity...reports are that he lived long enough to mumble a few words and try to get away by rolling off of the stretcher they were carrying him on - not nearly long enough, but I like to think that his end was maybe hastened by the pure terror of anticipating what was going to happen to him - perhaps he was actually scared to death....
20 posted on 06/09/2006 9:34:45 PM PDT by Intolerant in NJ
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