Al-Zarqawi House -- Shoot Here

THE TARGET: The house, made of cinder blocks and reinforced concrete, was set back in a grove of date palms, about 1.25 miles (2 km) northeast of the village of Hibhib. On the roof is printed in large red block letters: AL-ZARQAWI HOUSE -- SHOOT HERE. (Thanks Col. Dave for the tongue-in-cheek picture)

THE GROUND TEAM: A small Delta Force team of perhaps half a dozen, together with a handful of Iraqi security personnel, watches the house and confirms that al-Zarqawi and Sheik Abdul-Rahman, his adviser, are inside. With darkness approaching and lacking enough forces to storm the house, the surveillance team calls for an air strike. Two Air Force F-16 fighters respond. A spotter on the ground illuminates the target with a laser.

THE AIR TEAM: The F-16 Fighting Falcon is a compact, light and versatile fighter jet. It is highly maneuverable and able to perform in both air-to-air and air-to-surface combat.

THE BOMBS: The first bomb is a GBU-12, a 500-lb smart bomb that follows the laser signal to its target. A guidance system in the nose of the bomb detects that spot and controls the movements of the airfoils in the rear to steer the bomb toward the target. The second bomb is a GBU-38 similar in weight to its counterpart, this one finds its target using GPS coordinates and satellite guidance. Nice touch, don't you think?

A Time Magazine story tells the inside story of how al-Qaeda informants turned on Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, led U.S. forces to the terrorist's lair and ended a frustrating hunt for Iraq's most wanted man. What al-Zarqawi could not have known was that U.S. and Jordanian intelligence officials had been tracking the movements of Abdul-Rahman for weeks. The net around al-Zarqawi tightened significantly in the weeks leading up to the strike, boosted by the cooperation of al-Qaeda informants willing to betray their leader.

The U.S. scored the war's biggest triumph since catching Saddam Hussein thanks to the determination of a small group of American hunters and to a Jordanian King's desire to avenge the November 2005 suicide attacks on three hotels in Amman, Jordan which killed 60 people.

The violence is not only al-Qaeda, said a Jordanian security official. But this weakens one important link. It's a warning to all these groups that they are not immune. If we can get Zarqawi, we can get you too.

Well done!!

And the Democrat's response?

This is just to cover Bush's (rear) so he doesn't have to answer questions about things in Iraq, said Rep. Pete Stark, second ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. This insurgency is such a confused mess that one person, dead or alive at this point, is hardly significant today, said Rep. Jim McDermott, formerly the lead Democrat on the House ethics committee. The deceased, said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a candidate for the 2004 presidential nomination, was a small part of a growing anti-American insurgency.

Michael Barone writes: The Stark-McDermott-Kucinich reaction, echoed and amplified, often scatologically, by dozens of commenters on the popular dailykos.com and myDD.com left-wing websites, tells us something disturbing about the Democratic Party. It comes down to this: A substantial part of the Democratic Party, some of its politicians and many of its loudest supporters, do not want America to succeed in Iraq.

We are in an asymmetrical struggle with vicious enemies who slaughter civilians and bystanders and journalists without any regard for the laws of war. But too often we and our enemies are portrayed as moral equivalents. One or two instances of American misconduct are found equal in the balance to a consistent and premeditated campaign of barbarism.

All of this does not go unnoticed by America's voters.