al-Zarqawi Buzzkill

Just about the time I get happy about something that happens in Iraq, the goddang reality-based community's got to ruin it for me.

Kevin Drum reminds us that Bush could have incinerated al-Zarqawi long ago--before the invasion--but several times refused to do so. He apparently did this in order to prop up his already-well-on-their-way-to-being-discredited claims of Saddam-al Qaeda links. (As you probably know, ali-Z was in the north, out of Saddam's sphere of control.)

So, while I don't want to be a nattering nabob of negativism, the triumphalism on the right about this is a tad incoherent. The better you think it is that al-Zarqawi is dead, the worse you have to think it is that--for propaganda reasons--Bush refrained from killing him years ago.