Posted on 06/10/2006 11:20:03 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
N THE late afternoon sky over Iraq, two F-16 pilots were "in the orbit", as the US Air Force calls it, cruising through a routine patrol about to become anything but.
Their radios crackled. A "high-value target" - military-speak for a terrorist big shot - was in an isolated safe house in a date palm grove below. Here are the co-ordinates, they heard. Prepare to engage. As the pilots swung towards Baquba, the most wanted man in Iraq probably did not even notice the fighter jets, kept kilometres away, or realise he had been betrayed by an ally and trailed by US special forces.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - the face of the Iraqi insurgency, beheader of hostages and bomber of civilians, a man whose taste for violence made him stand out even in a violent land - never saw it coming.
The first 227-kilogram, guided bomb hit the safe house at 6.15pm on Wednesday, Baghdad time. The pilots doubled back and decided not to take any chances. They dropped a second satellite-guided bomb "to ensure the target set was serviced appropriately", an air force general said.
Zarqawi, his spiritual adviser, Sheik Abu Abdul-Rahman, and four others were dead - after a week-long investigation.
Through tips from a leader in Zarqawi's network, and other sources, the US was onto Abdul-Rahman, who inadvertently led coalition forces to the house.
Zarqawi's capture or death was a priority for US troops in Iraq. The Jordanian terrorist, in his late 30s, had risen almost to Osama bin Laden's stature, in terms of US attention.
Zarqawi and his aides had been hunted by an elite and secretive team of US special forces - Task Force 77. They nearly apprehended him several times, most recently in April during raids near Yusufiyah in the south.
Now US officials say his capture happened through some old-style investigations and breaks. There were varying reports of how Zarqawi was tracked down.
Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who announced on Thursday morning that Zarqawi had been "eliminated", credited tips from residents in Baquba, north-east of Baghdad. And Iraq's Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, suggested Zarqawi had slipped up trying to gain publicity, saying officials "pinpointed" his location in a video released in late April.
And in a crucial breakthrough last month, Jordanian intelligence officers captured a mid-level Zarqawi operative near the Iraqi border.
The operative, Ziad Khalaf al-Kerbouly, used his position as an Iraqi customs clearance officer in Rutbah, along the main road from Amman to Baghdad, to help Zarqawi smuggle cash and materiel for the insurgency.
Kerbouly told Jordanian interrogators the identity and contacts for Zarqawi's spiritual adviser, who served as his liaison to Muslim clerics across Iraq, gathering recruits, funding and support for the insurgency.
Major-General Bill Caldwell, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, declined to comment about Jordanian help on Thursday. By his account, the capture or killing of al-Qaeda lieutenants in recent weeks, beginning with a cell leader in Yusufiyah on April 6, produced critical intelligence.
Task Force 77 located Abdul-Rahman and kept him under surveillance, partly by remote-controlled planes. When US forces knew the adviser would meet Zarqawi on Wednesday night, they decided to strike.
"We knew exactly who was there," General Caldwell said. "We knew it was Zarqawi, and that was who we went to get."
Shown from above in a military photograph, the house appeared to be a white, two-storey structure with a verdant courtyard, located beside ploughed fields and a paved road at the edge of a date palm forest. No other buildings were nearby.
US officials say his dead body was photographed as evidence within minutes of the strike.
Zarqawi himself firing his automatic weapon after getting help
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Vanity killed master of evil al-Zarqawi
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It's not dramatized much though, we really need a video....
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By 5.30pm local time commandos from task force 145 surrounded the house, then Habhib village itself.
Mr Ismael said American soldiers began swarming the town, seemingly coming from nowhere, with some soldiers sliding down ropes dropped from Black Hawk helicopters.
"The entire village was seized," Mr Ismael said.
He said someone inside the house began shooting as the American commandos took up positions. The Americans returned fire but the fight did not last long.
Senior officers in Baghdad called in an air strike at sunset on Wednesday.
The media is so afraid of it sounding like a point in President Bush's favor that they don't want to discuss the intricacies of it.
Better to make it look like Clinton's mis-strike on the Al-Shifa aspirin factory in the Sudan.
What is that Clancy book,....Rainbow Six?
I think I need a copy....
I like that scenario...it means he had a good three/four hours to mull over whether he'd get the Mussolini treatment....good.
LOL, 700 pages of of secret-agent patois! Looks like the video gamers took to it big!!
Leftists MoonBats at it again......
You would think some enterprising reporter would be asking if the Butcher was surprised by the manna from heaven.....hell he had his suicide vest off so he could run deeper into his cave or so he could go on point a fire his automatic rifle that he was so proud of on the video....
There was a whole thread about what his last words were. He was still alive when the Troops found him and mumbled something. Be interesting to know.
I cannot help but notice...she is carrying some pretty heavy ordnance in the upper torso region.
- Always a crowd pleaser
- The ladies like it
- The men like it
You ping me to the next lady who likes it, snicker!
Good stuff in that report,....the Jordanian's were very heavily involved it appears...
See Texkat's links for more of the story.....
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