Word: zarqawi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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This morning, Pentagon halls are buzzing with the reverberations of the killing of terrorist leader Abu Mousab Al Zarqawi last night in an airstrike in Iraq. There is a huge-if brief-sense of relief about finally taking out the symbolic and logistical heart of the Iraqi insurgency. In part, that is because the small, covert, 12-man teams of U.S. special forces have been chasing Zarqawi for years. "Every time I heard somebody complain we hadn't got Zarqawi yet, I had to grit my teeth," said a Pentagon official, "because I knew we had multiple teams out every...
...Though details are still emerging, it appears Zarqawi was killed when two Air Force F-16s from Balad Air Base in Iraq were directed to the house where Zarqawi was and dropped precision weapons. At a briefing this morning from Iraq, a senior U.S. officer displayed a large picture of the face of Zarqawi's corpse, part of a high-profile p.r. effort to show that the al-Qaeda military leader, who just weeks ago relased his own video of himself shooting an automatic weapon, was indisputably dead. President George Bush jumped on the rare, high-profile military success...
...outbreak of insurgent violence in reaction to the news. Attacks in Iraq have already reached an all-time high of 700 per week, according to a State Department source, and officers are bracing for the scores of terrorist and criminal cells spread across Iraq to react to news of Zarqawi's killing. For the special forces troops, they are already moving on to the next target. In an exclusive interview with TIME recently, Lt. General Dell Dailey talked about how U.S. forces had tracked a terrorist from the Achille Lauro ship hijacking in 1980 to Iraq two years...
...mostly ran at about 40 a month, though in January, 1,000 showed up to join. But al-Qaeda responded by sending a chest-vest suicide bomber into the queue of applicants, killing about 40 Iraqis, wounding 80, and killing two Americans. When the recruits returned days later, al-Zarqawi followed up with a wave of seven assassinations of tribal sheiks. "That hurt us a lot," says Gronski...
Given the ability of al-Zarqawi's men to melt into the city, Kilo Company has few options but to search for the insurgents on block-by-block foot patrols through the worst areas. It's perilous work. On one morning this month, Tasayco and Corporal Nathan Buck take their squad out to commandeer a small shopping complex, which will give cover for the rest of the platoon to push east. On the roof, Buck, his helmet emblazoned with the words DEATH DEALERS in thick letters, warns his Marines to stay alert. When Tasayco sees movement in a nearby window...