Good News: He didn't die quickly

From the Associated Press...

A mortally wounded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, still alive after a U.S. airstrike on his hideout, mumbled briefly and attempted to "turn away off the stretcher" he had been placed on by Iraqi police, the U.S. military said Friday.

U.S. officials had said Thursday in announcing the attack that Zarqawi was dead when U.S. troops arrived on the scene.

Maj. Gen. Bill Caldwell, briefing military reporters at the Pentagon from his post in Baghdad, said he learned after getting briefings Friday that Zarqawi was alive when Iraqi police first arrived on the scene, but he died a short time later.

"We did in fact see him alive," Caldwell said. "He mumbled a little something but it was indistinguishable and it was very short."

It isn't clear exactly how he died. Some are amazed that he would even have been intact, let alone breathing after such a bombing. Well, I always heard cockroaches could survive about anything.

Posted by Danny Carlton at June 9, 2006 10:53 AM