It's Chinatown

Dennis Prager said that he believes that the news of Zarqawi's killing would be greeted by the left with sorrow, because it will help George Bush. NPR's subhead on it's main page is:

A symbolic strike by U.S. forces may change little about the situation on the ground.

Tim Worstall sampled the broadcast media and found the same minimizing attitude.

George Friedman was a guest on Prager's show, with an interesting comment that the death of Zarqawi was almost simultaneous with the finalizing of the new cabinet of Mr. Taliki in which the Minister of Defense/Security is now a Sunni. He sees this as evidence that the Sunnis had been protecting Zark, to use him as a bargaining chip. That implies that they could have fingered him earlier and allowed him to continue his murders until they got what they want from the Shiites and Kurds, i.e. a powerful post in the new government. This has to be a gamble, since a Sunni at the head of the military might see himself as the next Saddam. I don't think we'd allow that, so long as we have Republicans in the White House and control of Congress. Time will tell.

Dan Darling believes that Al Qaeda turned on him when he rejected their counsel against continuing to kill other Muslims.

Jim Geraghty notes the gloomy reactions from ex-CIA analyst Michael Scheurer and Nick Berg's dad:

I believe that Berg's father just said Zarqawi getting whacked "will stir resentment among al-Qaeda."

Dude, they're al-Qaeda. They're already resentful.

All of this makes me realize once again that the media and I don't really know how things work in the Arab world. The difference is that I don't claim to know.