WSJ: Zarqawi Is Dead. What Now?

[Barrett808]

Zarqawi Is Dead. What Now?
The U.S. must seize the initiative.
BY BRET STEPHENS
Sunday, June 18, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

It will be months, perhaps longer, before we'll be able to gauge the precise impact of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death on the nature, effectiveness and direction of the insurgency in Iraq. But the most significant fact here isn't that Zarqawi was killed--he could have met his end in any number of ways. It's that he was found.

Pause a minute to consider what this means. Plenty has been written about the shortcomings of U.S. war-fighting, political and counterinsurgency strategies in Iraq, and some of it is true. Comparably little has been written about the insurgents' shortcomings. Yet Zarqawi was located because he and his spiritual adviser, Abdul Rahman, were betrayed by someone in their own camp, someone close enough to track their movements exactly. Therein must lie a tale.

...

Finally, the insurgency must contend with a much more experienced and effective U.S. military. "The first year, we were in over our heads," says Mr. White. Since then, however, "there's been a much more powerful and integrated effort to put all the intelligence together in a package, including all sources, all classifications, and then pushing it down to the units that can use it." The military got some lucky breaks in its hunt for Zarqawi. But the fact that it was able to find him at all reflects a broad and serious effort to master the cultural terrain of clans, tribes, kinship networks and political factions in which the insurgency has flourished.

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