Great reporting--and chilling stuff--on Fox News Channel's Dayside today from correspondent Mike Tobin, on the ground in Zarqawi's hometown of Zarqa, Jordan:
TOBIN: Here in the town of Zarqa, the Jordanian authorities are not making it easy for reporters to do their job. That is because there's a minority viewpoint in this town that the government simply does not want out. That is the viewpoint coming from a core group of supporters and family that now regard Abu Masab al-Zarqawi as a hero and a martyr who died fighting a holy war. One relative said that he hopes [Zarqawi] would be replaced by a thousand others just like him.
Now last November, I spent a considerable amount of time in this town with some relatives and with the tribal sheik who ran this town in which Zarqawi grew up. He said they understood the amount of hatred generated towards Zarqawi, particularly for the iman bombings, in which sixty innocent people were guilty only of going to a wedding that night. They also predicted at the time that Zarqawi would ultimately die by the sword. As we saw, in fact, he indeed did.
Now Zarqawi, you know, had multiple death sentences here in Jordan, in the Kingdom of Jordan, and the government expressed pleasure with his passing today. The government was quick to point out the role Jordanian intelligence played in locating Zarqawi. An unnamed Jordanian offical said intelligence agents had analyzed video Zarqawi had released to help pinpoint his location and went as far to put undercover agents in to Iraq to try to verify that location.... He was regarded... as a half-wit who never would amount to much more than a thief or a thug. What he amounted to, as we all know now, is a ruthless killer who dispatched bombers to kill others of his own people. Still, here in this town there is that core group of supporters who are behind him, who regard him as a hero, and now they regard him as someone larger than life. A martyr.
