The Benefits of Diplomacy?

By now the entire world knows of the killing of 'Al-Qaeda in Iraq' head sociopath, Musab al-Zarqawi. He was killed in a tactical airstrike sometime on Wednesday, after weeks of intelligence gathering and "helped by tip-offs from Iraqis and Jordanian intelligence", according to Reuters. Apparently, the crucial tip came from Iraqis living near the 'safe house' he was occupying in the small town of Hibhib near Baquba. This town lies about 25 miles from the Iranian border.

Now, there seems to be an interesting coincidence here. Zarqawi, being a Sunni, was waging sectarian violence against Shiites. Iran is a Shiite nation. When we toppled Saddam, a secular Sunni leader, and announced that Iraq should have a unity representative government, Iran had to have been quietly excited. Shiites are the largest of the three factions in Iraq, so giving Iraqi Shiites, many of whom have very close ties to Iran, more power can only play into Iran's hands down the road.

Now I wonder if anyone else finds it curious that we find and kill Zarqawi only a couple of weeks after the Bush administration finally pulled it's head out of it's derriere and actually decided to talk to the Iranians about their nuclear program? Hmmm, very coincidental.... We've been using all manner of high-tech electronic and desperate on the ground intelligence to try to find this guy for at least two years, and all the sudden, literally a couple of weeks after the slight diplomatic warm-up between ourselves and Iran, he pops up on the radar. Maybe things are a little warmer than they appear publicly. Additionally, eventhough we knew where he was, an airstrike is called in, instead of trying to capture him alive. Though if he was surrounded by large numbers of militia, in a firefight situation, he could've wound up dead anyway.

Gee, when is Musharraf in Pakistan going to ever cough up bin-Laden for us? The answer - never. He's a little to close to the whole Bush family/ bin-Laden family/ House of Saud/ Carlyle group "Axis of oil money". Not to mention, he knows about everyone's skeletons in their closets. Zarqawi? Just some un-wealthy punk out of Jordan.