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(Updated) Terrorist’s Death a Hollow Victory?

May 1st, 2007
By SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist

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iraq_alMasriPhoto.jpg

As Ed Morrissey well puts it over at Captain’s Quarters, we’ll have to wait for the official scorer before we can be sure that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, has indeed been killed in a battle with other insurgents.

Iraq’s Interior Ministry claims that Al-Masri is dead, but its track record is piss-poor and it turns out the claim is based on so-called tribal reports and not a body ID. The official scorer, of course, is the U.S., but even if Al-Masri has been offed, it’s not time to open the champagne.

As Marc Lynch explains at Abu Aardvark:

If it is true, it would be great in terms of getting rid of someone responsible for a lot of the worst outrages in Iraq. Politically, however, the most likely effect will be similar to the Zarqawi hit. Like Zarqawi, Masri has been increasingly divisive in the insurgency . . . If he’s gone, it may be exactly what the insurgency factions need to repair their frayed ties and to refocus on fighting the American occupation rather than each other.



This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 at 5:11 am and is filed under Al Qaeda, Iraq. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

 
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