Charles Johnson has a few choice words about the New York Times’ culture of disloyalty.

Can anyone imagine a photographer employed by an American newspaper happily collecting pictures of a Jap sniper firing at US forces in WWII? (There is even worse at the beginning of the slideshow.)

AP reports that the late Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s cell phone has been examined and was found to contain some intriguing phone numbers.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had the phone numbers of senior Iraqi officials stored in his cell phone, according to an Iraqi legislator.

Waiel Abdul-Latif, a member of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s party, said Monday that authorities found the numbers after al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in a U.S. air strike on June 7.

Abdul-Latif did not give names of the officials. But he said they included ministry employees and members of parliament.

He called for an investigation, saying Iraqis “cannot have one hand with the government and another with the terrorists.”

A terrorist fifth column inside the hastily assembled Iraqi government, I suppose, was always a strong possibility.

A recent commenter from the UK took issue with postings here arguing that George W. Bush ought to have done more to mobilize and involve the American public in the Iraq War. Insisting that the Invasion of Iraq should not be viewed as an appropriate action in the War on Terror begun in response to 9/11, she wrote, referrring to the text of the author I quoted and linked: “are you suggesting Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the Twin Towers thingie?”

Of course, the specific causus belli of the US Invasion of Iraq was Saddam Hussein’s persistent violation of the Gulf War Cease Fire Agreement and his continuing breach of UN Resolutions, requiring him to submit to weapons inspections and surrender materials known to be in his possession. But grounds for suspicion of possible Iraqi involvement in 9/11 certainly do exist.

Czech Intelligence has never backed away from its report that Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi Intelligence officer Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani in Prague 08 April 2001.

There is also the Telegraph news story, published back on 14 Dec 2003, that 9/11 hijack leader Mohammed Atta underwent some form of training for the 9/11 attacks at the hands of the infamous Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal in Baghdad during the summer of 2001.

Abu Nidal had been a guest of Saddam Hussein since 1999, occupying a villa supplied by the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret service, in the wealthy al-Masbah neighborhood of
al-Jadriyah, Baghdad. Abu Nidal was killed 14 August 2002 by an Iraqi Mukhabarat assassination unit.

Iraq’s coalition government claims that it has uncovered documentary proof that Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist.

Details of Atta’s visit to the Iraqi capital in the summer of 2001, just weeks before he launched the most devastating terrorist attack in US history, are contained in a top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001 and provides a short resume of a three-day “work programme” Atta had undertaken at Abu Nidal’s base in Baghdad.

In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta “displayed extraordinary effort” and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be “responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy”.

The second part of the memo, which is headed “Niger Shipment”, contains a report about an unspecified shipment – believed to be uranium – that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.

Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq’s ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.

“We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam’s involvement with al-Qaeda,” he said. “But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks.”

All this is unproven at the present time, but it would certainly be premature of dismiss these reports out of hand, as the Left has done out of partisan motivation.

Jules Crittenden in the Boston Herald identifies exactly the same mistake, which folly goes back to Lyndon Johnson and before him to Harry Truman: half-measures and the failure to mobilize the whole of the nation in the war effort, in a democracy like ours, will result in a continual erosion of public support, if victory is not achieved over a very short interval of time.

Prosecution of any war will always be opposed by a radical and pacifist fringe, who will quickly attract the support of the community of fashion, which is always in search of a cause. Once that alliance is organized and in operation, the general public will be subjected to an endless barrage of whingeing and anti-war propaganda, which in the end will demoralize the general public. Normal people will insist the war be abandoned, in the end, simply because they are so terribly, terribly sick of listening to the Left.

Five years on, some people remain unaware that this is war; that we are facing an enemy that will do anything in its power to destroy us.

The fact that on any given day we are free to fly around the world, drive our cars without restriction and buy as much food as we like in rich variety seems to have confused them.

The lack of U-boats attacking the shipping lanes has lulled some people into thinking this is not actually a war. Not a real war, certainly not a good war, not like World War II. They mock the very notion that it is a war, having fun with the name “Global War on Terror.” They put forward the notion that, like almost everything else in our American lives, this thing that has been called a war is a choice. A bad choice.

Who can blame them? Even fighting in this war, unlike most of the great wars our that threatened our existence in the past, is a choice made by a small percentage of Americans who have joined the Armed Forces.

George Bush, while announcing that we were at war five years ago, made a decision to encourage Americans to go about their business as usual. Rather than mobilizing the country for war, he decided he could fight this unconventional war by unconventional means, and with the forces already at hand. Normalcy had its uses as a weapon. It showed that our enemy could not hobble us.

In other respects, it was a mistake…

Bush chose not to treat this as total war, insisting it could be done with some finetuning of the resources at hand. His domestic opposition has taken that idea several steps farther, insisting Islamic terrorism is a police problem that does not require military force and certainly not the suspension of some legal niceties. After all, they do not consider it an actual war of the sort faced by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt when they destroyed cities and imprisoned anyone who threatened the security of the nation.

Ironically, Bush has been so effective with his approach, that there has not been an attack on the mainland United States since 9-11. That has allowed his opposition to maintain that all the unpleasant things Bush has had to do domestically and abroad are unnecessary, or the very least excessive. They’ve had the freedom to nitpick at the execution of the war, expressing indignation at every misstep, while ignoring major accomplishments, which they see after all as the accomplishments of an unnecessary war based on global intelligence failures that, in hindsight, they cast as lies.

Randy Barnett correctly identifies two of the current administration’s most serious mistakes:

It has long seemed clear to me and many others who are otherwise sympathetic to its policies that the Bush administration made two colossal errors in prosecuting the general war on terror.

First: Not seeking quick explicit congressional authorization for such policies as incarceration, military tribunals, etc. The Hamdan case was just one result of this failure. Now, such involvement is much more difficult to accomplish; then it would have been relatively easy. Just not as easy as going it alone, which has proved to be the harder course in the long run.

Second: Not involving the American public directly in supporting the war. Tax increases or a military draft were not needed for this. But bond drives, resource collection, and other assistance-to-the-military programs — even better, some form of volunteer genuine militia service — in the wake of 9/11 would have given the public some ownership of the resulting policies. Many called for these sorts of initiatives at the time. They were waiting to be asked to pitch in and help. Instead the administration adopted a Vietnam-type strategy of “We’ll handle things; you all go about your business.” Which leads to bad reactions when “things” do not go as smoothly as expected.

The administration essentially opted for a one-branch war, and the country is now paying the price for that decision. While the failure to involve Congress is merely hard to rectify at this point, the failure adequately to involve the public may now be impossible to remedy.

The Russian News and Information Agency Novosti reports that Vladimir Putin has put out a hit order on the insurgent killers of the four Russian diplomats slain in Iraq.

President Vladimir Putin Wednesday ordered Russia’s special services to do everything necessary to find and eliminate the killers of four Russian diplomats in Iraq, the Kremlin press service said….

Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Federal Security Service, told journalists that his service had received the instructions. “We will work to ensure so that not one of the terrorists who committed the crime escapes just punishment,” he said.

It is credibly rumored that when several Russian diplomatic personnel, including the KGB rezident, were kidnaped by Hezbollah in Lebanon back in the 1980s, Russian specialists were dispatched to Beirut, who proceeded to kidnap near relatives of Hezbollah’s leadership. The male apparatus of those captured relations was delivered to Hezbollah bosses, along with a promise that the Russian security forces would be collecting theirs as well, if the Russian diplomats were not released immediately unharmed. The Russians were released.

The effectiveness of Russian measures contrasted with useless American pleas for the release of Beirut CIA station chief William Buckley, whose death by torture was videotaped and tauntingly released to the Press.

Whatever will the Council of Europe, the New York Times editorial page, and Andrew Sullivan have to say, do you suppose, about the soon-to-occur treatment of the insurgent kidnappers by avenging Russian security forces?

Will accusations of denial of due process and Geneva Convention Rights make the front page of the Post and the Times? Will Seymour Hersch expose Russsian brutality in the New Yorker? Will the lachrymose chorus of blogging bed-wetters spill another few trillion electrons condemning Russian coercive interrogation?

Frankly, I doubt it.

In Gaza. In the hands of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militia arm of Yasir Arafat’s al-Fatah.

The Jerusalem Post reported Sunday (but the New York Times and the rest of the US MSM are pretending they have not read it):

The Aksa Martyrs Brigades announced on Sunday that its members have succeeded in manufacturing chemical and biological weapons.

In a leaflet distributed in the Gaza Strip, the group, which belongs to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party, said the weapons were the result of a three-year effort.

According to the statement, the first of its kind, the group has managed to manufacture and develop at least 20 different types of biological and chemical weapons.

The group said its members would not hesitate to add the new weapons to Kassam rockets that are being fired at Israeli communities almost every day. It also threatened to use the weapons against IDF soldiers if Israel carried out its threats to invade the Gaza Strip.

I’ve clarified the headline, since readers could not actually see my sardonic smile, and may have often read it as a completely literal statement.

Israel invaded Gaza today (attempting to recover the kidnapped Israeli soldier), so we may soon find out whether that Palestinian militia was really telling the truth about having WMDS.

Newsmax has new and detailed information on the events at Haditha, supplied by military sources, which makes the civilian casualties sound deliberately contrived by the insurgents, precisely in order to makes accusations against US Marines. It’s important to remember that the “Haditha massacre” story originated from accusations made by “activist” sources hostile to the US.

Within minutes of the early morning IED explosion, a firefight erupted between insurgents and Marines. Civilians were caught in the middle of the firefight. Also, although civilians did die, their deaths were the result of door-to-door combat as the Marines sought to clear houses and stop the insurgent gunfire.

Ample evidence proves that a firefight took place. For example, every second of the ensuing firefight was monitored by numerous people at company, battalion, and regimental HQs via radio communications.

Video evidence supports the Marines’ claims. Within a very few minutes, battalion, regimental, and division headquarters were able to watch the action thanks to an overhead ultralight aircraft that remained aloft all day. Photos of some of the action were downloaded and in the hands of Marines and the NCIS.

Some of the insurgents involved in planning the attack and firing at Marines during a daylong engagement have been apprehended and are in custody…

One Knight Ridder reporter called Haditha, a town of about 100,000 people, “an insurgent bastion,” reporting that “insurgents blend in with the residents, setting up cells in their homes next to those belonging to everyday citizens, some of them supportive.”

Knight Ridder said that around the time of an August attack, when a total of 20 U.S. Marines were killed in two days, “several storefronts were lined with posters and pictures supporting al-Qaida. … There is no functioning police station and the government offices are largely vacant. The last man to call himself mayor relinquished the title earlier this year after scores of death threats from insurgents.”

According to an August 2005 story in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Haditha, under the nose of an American base, “is a miniature Taliban-like state. Insurgents decide who lives and dies, which salaries get paid, what people wear, what they watch and listen to.”

When the Marines first went into the city, they were aware of the tight control insurgents exercised over Haditha. They discovered that the insurgents had freshly paved over dirt roads leading into town under the auspices of civic works projects.

They were, according to a NewsMax source, “beautiful asphalt-surfaced roads” that even included painted lines. The only problem, the source recalled, was that insurgents had laid more than 100 mega-IEDs under that asphalt. And, in order to avoid having to change batteries in the triggering devices, they had wired them into the city power lines lining the road.

It is important to remember that the so-called details of the alleged massacre came from Iraqis and residents of Haditha, a city run by insurgents who have those residents not allied with them under their bloody thumbs.

In the Post story, an attorney for Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, 26, said that his client told him that several civilians were killed Nov. 19 when his squad went after insurgents who were firing at them from inside a house. He insisted there was no vengeful massacre, but he described a house-to-house hunt that went tragically awry in the middle of a chaotic battlefield.

“It will forever be his position that everything they did that day was following their rules of engagement and to protect the lives of Marines,” Neal A. Puckett, who represents Wuterich in the ongoing investigations into the incident, told the Post. “He’s really upset that people believe that he and his Marines are even capable of intentionally killing innocent civilians.”

According to the Post, Wuterich told his attorney in initial interviews over nearly 12 hours that the shootings were the unfortunate result of a methodical sweep for enemies in a firefight. Two attorneys for other Marines involved in the incident said Wuterich’s account is consistent with those they had heard from their clients.

Wrote the Post: “On Nov. 19, Wuterich’s squad left its headquarters at Firm Base Sparta in Haditha at 7 a.m. on a daily mission to drop off Iraqi army troops at a nearby checkpoint. “It was like any other day, we just had to watch out for any other activity that looked suspicious,” said Marine Cpl. James Crossan, 21, in an interview from his home in North Bend, Wash. He was riding in the four-Humvee convoy as it turned left onto Chestnut Road, heading west at 7:15 a.m.

“Shortly after the turn, a bomb buried in the road ripped through the last Humvee. The blast instantly killed the driver, Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, 20. Wuterich, who was driving the third Humvee in the line, immediately stopped the convoy and got out, Puckett told the Post, adding that while Wuterich was evaluating the scene, Marines noticed a white unmarked car full of “military-aged men” lingering near the bomb site. When Marines ordered the men to stop, they ran; Puckett said it was standard procedure at the time for the Marines to shoot suspicious people fleeing a bombing, and the Marines opened fire, killing four or five men.

“The first thing he thought was it could be a vehicle-borne bomb or these guys could be ready to do a drive-by shooting,” Puckett said, explaining that the Marines were on alert for such coordinated, multistage attacks.

According to Puckett, as Wuterich began briefing the platoon leader, AK-47 shots rang out from residences on the south side of the road, and the Marines ducked.

A corporal with the unit leaned over to Wuterich and said he saw the shots coming from a specific house. After a discussion with the platoon leader, they decided to clear the house, according to Wuterich’s account.

“There was a threat, and they went to eliminate the threat,” Puckett said.

A four-man team of Marines, including Wuterich, kicked in the door and found a series of empty rooms, noticing quickly that there was one room with a closed door and people rustling behind it, Puckett said. They then kicked in that door, tossed a fragmentation grenade into the room, and one Marine fired a series of “clearing rounds” through the dust and smoke, killing several people, Puckett said.

The Marine who fired the rounds – Puckett said it was not Wuterich – had experience clearing numerous houses on a deployment in Fallujah, where Marines had aggressive rules of engagement.

Although it was almost immediately apparent to the Marines that the people dead in the room were men, women, and children — most likely civilians — they also noticed a back door ajar and believed that insurgents had slipped through to a house nearby, Puckett said. The Marines stealthily moved to the second house, kicking in the door, killing one man inside and then using a fragmentation grenade and more gunfire to clear another room full of people, he said.

Wuterich, not having found the insurgents, told the team to stop and headed back to the platoon leader to reassess the situation, Puckett said, adding that his client knew a number of civilians had just been killed.

As already stated, the Haditha massacre story reported by Time magazine was based entirely on accounts from Iraqis with an ax to grind. The facts of what happened tell a different story. The real story, it will eventually be revealed, is backed up by evidence Time didn’t know existed. It gives the lie to the idea that there was anything like a massacre in Haditha on Nov. 19. Here, for the first time, is the truth about what happened.

NewsMax can verify Wuterich’s account. The site of the IED explosion was in an area well known as an insurgent stronghold, where as many as 50 IEDs were found previously, and from where, on two previous occasions, insurgents launched small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar attacks on K Company.

Within five minutes of the blast, Marines on the scene reported they were receiving small-arms fire. Within 30 minutes of the blast, and while the house-clearing was still under way, an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team en route to the site came under small-arms fire in a known insurgent tactic to ambush first responders.

At the same time, just 30 minutes after the house-clearing, an intelligence unit arrived to question the Marines involved in the house-clearing operation. NewsMax sources say the behavior of the Marines involved gave them no reason to believe anything but what they had been told.

At about the same time a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) arrived over the blast area and from that moment on, for the entire day , the UAV transmitted views of the engagement to the company command site, battalion headquarters, the regimental HQ, and the division HQ. What the UAV captured was a view of Marines in their perimeter, as they went about doing house-clearing. It was then vectored to the surrounding area to catch any fleeing insurgents. It showed four insurgents fleeing the neighborhood, loading weapons into their car, and linking up with their partners (the ones that had conducted the ambush on the EOD team).

Knowing what we now know about Wuterich’s account, these fleeing insurgents were most likely the same ones who left through the back door of the house he was clearing.

There are photos of this, and they show the insurgents getting back into their car after loading the weapons The UAV then followed them south to their safe house. From that point forward, until about 6 p.m., the safe house was hit by bombs and an assault by a K Company squad. The UAV followed the insurgents who had been inside through town.

The final tally for these engagements was two insurgents killed by direct fire, one killed by GBU bombs, and one detained. The entire action was followed by the UAV overhead…

The Haditha “massacre” being referred to is the 30 minutes to one hour that took place first thing in the morning. The rest of the day’s activities, in fact, confirmed the nature of the morning’s attack.

It is clear that the entire incident was planned and carried out by insurgents who detonated the IED, and then, in a familiar tactic, attacked the Marines responding to the blast — deliberately putting civilians at risk.

This is what happened in Haditha that day. It was a daylong engagement with armed insurgents that involved civilian casualties who died as a result of being caught in the middle of a firefight. It had been reported as a blast followed by a TIC — Marine Corps terminology for “Troops in Contact.” In other words, gunfire directed at the Marines.

Foreign and domestic news agencies are reporting that the US Marine Corps has charged seven Marines and a Navy sailor with murder over the death of an Iraqi civilian.

BBC News

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Crosspatch (a neighbor here in California) recently commented on the work already done by bloggers to investigate the irresponsible coverage of this matter in the MSM.

I have seen bloggers spending hours of their own time digging, fact checking, comparing, and publishing their findings for peer review and discussion. These are people that have jobs and other things in their lives that place demands on their time and energy but have answered what is apparently to them the call of an important mission, a call of duty.

While professional journalists should be doing the work that is being done by members of the general public in trying to get the story straight, we are already seeing results. Respected media giants such as Time are beginning to back off of some of their initial claims and distance themselves from initial sources.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am simply in awe. This spontaneous and most honest display of devotion by members of our community for our service members in seeing they get a fair shake is enough to make an old grouch misty.

Those troops are at risk every day defending us and it is wonderful to see such an outpouring of support when we have a chance to defend them in return. There are too many people out there doing whatever they can to list because I am afraid of leaving someone out and thereby diminishing their contribution, but they know who they are and honestly, it is events such as this that make me proud to be an American.

This is a real living example of the love and devotion America has for their armed forces members. If someone is going to make accusations that would bring dishonor on the institution of our military, they are going to need to run a gauntlet of ordinary Americans who are going to want to make darned sure they have done their homework first.

Unlike times not so far in the past, we now live in an America that really does support its troops, in both word and deed.

To those of you spending your own time and effort on this issue, I thank you with all my heart.

The battle will continue.

Democrats continually repeat the Big Lie that the US Invasion of Iraq was based on administration falsehoods about Weapons of Mass Destruction which did not exist. Good evidence of the hasty evacuation by truck and airplane of something to Syria are studiously ignored.

Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) disclosed today in a press conference on Fox News that an unclassified portion of a US intelligence report reveals that US forces have found 500 artillery shells containing sarin or mustard gas.

video at Allahpundit.

transcript at Instapundit.

Terrorists in Iraq, wearing no uniforms, recently violated the laws of war by the barbarous murder of two US soldiers.

AP:

The U.S. military recovered the booby-trapped bodies of two missing soldiers Tuesday, and Iraqi officials said the Americans were tortured and killed in a “barbaric” way. An insurgent group claimed the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq executed the men personally…

“Coalition forces had to carefully maneuver their way through numerous improvised explosive devices leading up to and around the site,” the military said in a statement. “Insurgents attempting to inflict additional casualties had placed IEDs around the bodies.”

A number of the usual offenders from the Blogosphere have taken this occasion, when we should all be voicing our indignation at the conduct of the enemy, and wishing our troops success in hunting the malefactors down and exacting vengeance, instead to strike moralizing poses and quote grave legal opinions, informing us of imaginary obligations to avoid excessive injury to the enemy.

Stephen Bainbridge turns to Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England:

Islamofascist terrorists will use torture regardless of whether the US responds in kind or not…

The Anglo-American tradition, according to the great English jurist William Blackstone, includes a “prohibition not only of killing and maiming, but also of torturing (to which our laws are strangers).” We thus ought to abstain from torture simply because a prohibition of torture is part of the moral and legal heritage we are fighting to defend.

Andrew Sullivan gets carried away with himself to the point of spouting treason, attributing to us moral equivalence with this particularly vicious and cowardly enemy.

One can only wish that Andrew Sullivan would go out to a workingman’s bar, and repeat exactly the same sentiments, in order to give some right-thinking American the opportunity to rebuke them in the most appropriate fashion.

My point is that we can no longer unequivocally condemn the torture of these two soldiers because we have endorsed and practised torture ourselves. What was once a difference in kind between us and our enemy is now a difference in degree. That fact profoundly weakens our moral standing in the world, the power of our cause, and impedes the long-run success in the war of ideas that the war on terror involves.

Gregory Djerejian contributes additional sanctimony.

Clearly, when American soldiers are tortured, murdered, and multilated by illegal combatants, the decision of just how the perpetrators should be punished, were the perpetrators of that outrage so unfortunate as to fall alive into the hands of US forces, ought to be the perogative of the local American commander. Politicians should not interfere, and the opinions of domestically-based law professors, corporate attorneys, and old ladies are completely beside the point.

The Laws of England and the Laws of the United States have not a thing to do with any of this. War takes place outside the jurisdiction of civilian law, and the murderers of Privates Menchaca and Tucker have no claim whatsoever to the privileges and immunities of the US legal system nor the least pretence to a right to be treated as prisoners of war.

They are unlawful combatants, and are eggregiously guilty of violating the customs and usages of war. Their lives ought to be regarded as forfeit, and the only questions a US commander on the scene ought to be asking himself in the event of their capture are: what form of execution would be regarded as most disagreeable by primitives infatuated with Islamic superstition? and, what would make the most dramatic impression, and provide the greatest deterrence to future outrages?

The British avenged the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 by tying the mutineers to the muzzles of cannons, which were then fired. Surely, we can do better today.

The two US soldiers murdered by barbarians are being avenged.

Centcom issued a press release this morning:

COALITION FORCES DETAIN SENIOR AL-QAIDA IN IRAQ NETWORK MEMBER

BAGHDAD — Coalition forces detained a senior al-Qaida in Iraq network member and three suspected terrorists during coordinated raids southwest of Baqubah June 19.

The terrorist is reportedly a senior al-Qaida cell leader throughout central Iraq, north of Baghdad. He’s known to be involved in facilitating foreign terrorists throughout central Iraq, and is suspected of having ties to previous attacks on Coalition and Iraqi forces.

Coalition forces secured multiple buildings and detained the known terrorist plus three suspected terrorists without incident. Troops found an AK-47 with several magazines of ammunition and destroyed them all on site.

Several women and children were present at the raid sites. None were harmed and all were returned to their homes once the troops ensured the area was secure.

The BBC reports:

Gen Caldwell said on Tuesday US forces had killed Zarqawi’s “right-hand man” in a raid in Yusifiya on Friday, near where the US troops were abducted.

The general said Iraqi Mansur Suleiman al-Mashhadani was “a key leader in al-Qaeda” and could have succeeded Zarqawi.

The US also said it had killed 15 “terrorists” in an “extremely long firefight” in Bushahin, north of Baquba.

Captain Ed has the most recent information:

CENTCOM announced minutes ago that one of the men expected to take the place of the now-room temperature Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has also reached thermal equilibrium near Baghdad. The spokesman for the military briefed reporters on the death of Sheikh Mansur, displaying before and after mug shots of the dead terrorist and explained his significance to the insurgent network in Iraq. So far, none of the wire services have picked up the story; I will fill in the details as they become available.