08 June 2006

Serpents

The editors of the New York Times must be disappointed today. They ran another lead story about an intelligence failure. They like to do that, keep our attention on the bobbles and set-backs so we lose our confidence and question our way.

The lead  story was about the CIA-funded operation run out of the Station in Nairobi that attempted to triangulate the Warlords and the Jihadis in Somalia, and keep that failed state from becoming the latest nexus of terrorist training camps.

The operation failed, or at least that is what government insiders are whispering. There is an Islamist group wandering the streets of Mogadishu claiming they are in charge, though even the United States has tried that and it did not work out that way.

The Times got the words from inside the government, of course. To deconstruct it and understand the real meaning, I would have to understand the motivation for the leak, what agency leaked it, and what tactical advantage in Washington and New York are to be gained. This is not just about the Horn of Africa, where no one has governed in a decade.

It was with some satisfaction that I opened the Times and saw that they had been scooped, and their story was, at least for this morning, irrelevant. The BBC had been all over it for hours.

It was spectacular news. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the vicious Jordanian creep and figurehead of the al Qaida franchise operation in Iraq, was killed in an air-strike just before dawn, local time, just as the Times was putting the front page to bed.

The words were not quite as dramatic as Ambassador Bremer's “We got him,” when they bagged Saddam. This time they were spoken by an Iraqi, new Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki , who announced that the thug was killed along with seven of his entourage in Diyala Province, east of the city of Baquoba. The Prime Minister said Zarqawi's identity was confirmed by fingerprint information, and a close look at his face.

The Prime Minister was on the stage with General Casey and Ambassador Khalilzad. I have a pal who is in the middle of all this, and I don't know if he was there with them or not. Somebody has to run the office when the grownups are doing media opportunities. He says all of them are working 14-18 hour days, seven days a week.

They needed some good news, and this meets the criteria.

Baquoba has been a hot spot lately, which makes life uncomfortable for those that live there full time.

The violence may have contributed to the willingness of local residents to finger the safe-house to the authorities. They, in turn, got the information to the fusion intelligence cell, who jumped on the secure phone and talked to the Joint Air Operations Center, who keyed the mike on the radio and passed the geo-coordinates to the pilot of an orbiting fighter, who selected “Master Arm” on the control stick and launched a laser-designated Mark-82 GBU. He then flew it successfully into the target.

Trust by the locals in the security forces is an indication of the real sentiment among the citizenry, and if it was the locals, this is a signal event.

It was the locals that tipped off the CIA and Bolivian authorities as to the whereabouts of charismatic communist Che Guevara. You can only swim in the sea of the people if the people do not think you are toxic.

The Jordanians have claimed a contribution to the operation. They are still miffed about the Zarqawi's attempted bombing of the security service HQ in 2004, and the successful hotel bombings last year. They are not a force to be trifled with.

At some point, a $25 million dollar bounty on your head, the wrath of an effective regional security service, angry locals and orbiting F-16's with laser-guided bombs, life can simply become unsupportable.

I try to avoid glee at the demise of others, since we all come to our eventual judgment in awful equality. But I confess to a quiet satisfaction at the death of this particular monster, and I hope that his passing was not painless. He cut the heads of two Americans, and is directly and personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds, of not thousands, of innocent civilians.

They say that another and another will step up to replace Zarqawi, but that is OK. Each one will be less experienced, less confident, more fearful. The seven that died with him may be more significant, since they would have been among the first to carry on the fight.

This is neither the great victory some claim, nor a mere symbol as others dismiss it.

It is good that a serpent has been killed. Better that his companion snakes died, too.

But if it was local Sunnis that turned him in, then that means something has changed in the mood of the people. And that is a very positive thing indeed.

I will be interested to see how the New York Times chooses to handle the story. They will be coming in late, and to turn it into a defeat, they will have to spin it, extra hard.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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