Zarqawi's Cell Phone - Flopping Aces

Very interesting news this morning that Zarqawi’s cell phone contained the numbers to some upper level officials in the new Iraqi government:

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.”

Surprise surprise. It’s long been known that in some parts of the Sunni community there was deep connections with the terrorists and this just proves how deep it has gone. Recall that the killing of Zarqawi resulted in a huge amount of intelligence regarding the terrorists inside Iraq and this may be a very important piece of it. I doubt that the new Iraqi government will look too kindly on those who have sold out the new nation and may have been directly involved in the deaths of many innocent civilians.

Recall this incident:

Security officials foiled an al-Qaida plot that would have put hundreds of its men at critical guard posts around Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, home to the US and other foreign embassies as well as the Iraqi government, the interior minister told The Associated Press.

A senior Defence Ministry official confirmed the plot yesterday and said the 421 al-Qaida fighters involved were actually recruited to storm the US and British embassies and take hostages.

Several ranking Defence Ministry officials have been jailed in the plot, the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, said the al-Qaida recruits were one bureaucrat’s signature away from acceptance into an Iraqi army battalion whose job is to control the gates and main squares in the Green Zone. The plot was discovered three weeks ago.

This occurred last March. Did Zarqawi have a hand in this?

Also recall that many on the left claimed that Zarqawi was just a Bush bad-guy creation, not a real threat at all:

Zarqawi’s importance to the tactical situation in Iraq has always been overstated, and I doubt he has any significance at all to the strategic situation.

There is no evidence of operational links between his Salafi Jihadis in Iraq and the real al-Qaeda; it was just a sort of branding that suited everyone, including the US. Official US spokesmen have all along over-estimated his importance. Leaders are significant and not always easily replaced. But Zarqawi has in my view has been less important than local Iraqi leaders and groups. I don’t expect the guerrilla war to subside any time soon.

But if he was not that well connected, not that important, how in the world did he have the direct numbers to members of Parliament inside the Sunni party?

The fact that his killing and the information provided from that raid has netted so much success should tell us volumes about his importance:

On June 25, the same day Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki proposed a new plan designed to diminish violence in Iraq, Coalition forces detained more than a dozen terrorists and killed several others in separate raids throughout Iraq.

Security forces were targeting two foreign terrorist facilitators who run al-Qaida in Iraq and foreign terrorist safe houses in the area. The ground forces secured multiple buildings at the target location, and detained 11 suspects without incident.

While securing the buildings, forces discovered two weapons caches in the area. The caches included several small arms weapons, suicide vests, body armor, multiple grenades, and an improvised explosive device manual. They were all destroyed on location along with one of the buildings where the weapons caches were located.

[…]Coalition forces also killed one terrorist and detained five others during raids in southern Baghdad.

Intelligence from the recent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi killing led forces to target these suspects. One of the suspects was directly associated with several senior-level al-Qaida members.

The digging out of moles inside the Iraqi government is just icing on the cake.

One question – Would anyone be surprised if Jack Murtha was on his speed dial?

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One question – Would anyone be surprised if Jack Murtha was on his speed dial?

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