Wouldn't it have been better to capture Zarqawi Alive?

They didn't do it because they needed the propaganda value out his killing.

Besides, any information he had about AQ would have been known by his "close associates" who were captured by Spec Ops.

Raw Story tells about Spec Ops capture of "associates" in May that helped lead to Zarqawi.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/The_real_heroes_of_Zarqawis_fall_0608.html

What if he talked?

linked to a Reuters online report that Z had been captured alive and then turned over to the Iraqis... where he then 'died of his injuries'.

Capturing alive wasn't the intent apparently.

from monitoring all those calls he made to US citizens? Was the NSA shut out on this one? Pity, that would have been a real propoganda coup.

Zarqawi wasn't killed today in the bombing
According to this Reuters report he was injured when the US found him. Then we turned the most dangerous mastermind terrorist in Iraq over to Iraqi custody, while he was still alive!

WTF! Why did we turn him over to anyone? Why on earth would we release a mortally wounded high value prisoner to the incompetent Iraqis? I guess BushCo only wants 'em dead, rather then alive. Who needs all that valuable information we could have tortured out of him if we kept him alive?


Jun 8, 2006 8:52 AM BST169

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a joint attack by U.S. helicopters and Iraqi forces, ABC news reported on Thursday.

It said U.S. helicopters hit a house near Baquba, 40 miles (65 km) north of Baghdad, at 6 p.m. local time on Wednesday.

"Zarqawi was apparently injured at first... The Americans found him. They handed him over to the Iraqis and he later died of his injuries," ABC said.

Six people, including a woman and a child, were killed in the house but only Zarqawi and Abdul-Rahman have been identified. Zarqawi was identified by his fingerprints and tattoos. A further DNA test was being carried out on Zarqawi.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=t...

Props to Postman!

nt

I was just about to post on it.

Well from the posts here he may have been captured alive but happened to fall down 38 times on the way to the hospital. There is a thread in LBN and apparently the rumors are that he tried to jump off the gurney and run or something like that.

I was thinking -Why wouldn't they have taken him alive. From the looks of where he was he couldn't have been a more perfectly isolated house. We know they can do it and apparently they did. Interesting tactic, no? Blast it with helicopters and sift through the rubble to find your guy.

He did look pretty banged up, a house falling on you tends to do that.