As Spencer Ackerman noted, there are indications that Zarqawi's replacement might be "just as barbaric as Zarqawi, but not as stupid." It's the "not as stupid part" that is a cause for concern.
This is potentially bad - potentially very bad. Remember that Zarqawi signed onto the al Qaeda program (to the degree he did) rather late in the game. For many years he's spent his life trying to undermine the Jordanian monarchy. He wasn't particularly close to UBL and Zawahiri. And clearly he didn't bother to learn the #1 lesson of much terrorism in the region (don't kill people potential supporters may feel connections with, kill foreigners and "others"). If this new guy is someone who actually has paid attention to what's worked in the realm of terrorism (or at least learned what's best avoided) and is more in-line with Zawahiri's priorities and tactics, we might (very sadly) soon see a rather more effective "al Qaeda in Iraq."
Posted by armand at June 21, 2006 09:24 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Iraq