zarqawi's blooper tape

omfg - i wake up to this news:

"Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq, doesn't exactly look like a terrorist mastermind in a new videotape released by the U.S. military today.

In blooper-type footage from a Zarqawi video released last week, the al Qaeda in Iraq leader is seen fumbling with a machine gun."

arghhhhhhhh.

I've been meaning to write about this post from Arkin:

Is the U.S. military just a hair away from killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq?

Last week, readers of an insider military publication have been treated to an unprecedented look inside "Task Force 145," the U.S. special operations group responsible for the manhunt inside Iraq.

Task Force 145 has a number one target, Zarqawi, who is the mastermind behind much of the most violent coordinated action in Iraq and is an active and direct threat to the United States military.

The intense operations against Zarqawi help to explain why so little seems to be going on in Pakistan
[]
Naylor describes a set of operations undertaken last month in Yusufiyah, a small town south of Baghdad, during which Task Force 145 came as close as 1,000 meters from Zarqawi. Ironically, the Task Force operators captured a videotape of Zarqawi in the raids, the same tape that came out this week on Islamist websites.

arkin points (with a straight face) to this article in the Army Times:

Just nine days before al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi released his latest video, a special operations raid killed five of his men, captured five others and apparently came within a couple of city blocks of nabbing Zarqawi himself.

Then, the day Zarqawi’s video debuted, special ops forces killed 12 more of his troops in a second raid in the same town.

[]

Zarqawi’s escape in Yusufiyah was not the first time special ops troops have nearly had him. In early 2005, they came so close they could see the Jordanian’s panicked face as he fled.

[]

Produced by al-Qaida in Iraq’s “Media Committee,” the video reflects “Zarqawi’s number one thing … the information campaign,” said the special ops source. But on the same day that video was released, “coalition forces” killed 12 other fighters at another Yusufiyah safe house “associated with foreign terrorists,” according to Central Command.

[]

But Zarqawi’s command style and his determination to take the same risks as his fighters have almost led to his capture on several occasions, with perhaps his closest brush with JSOC coming Feb. 20, 2005.

Using intelligence derived in part by an Arab-American soldier in TF 145, the task force obtained a time frame for when Zarqawi was due to travel down a stretch of highway along the Tigris River.

This allowed a task force of Rangers and Delta operators to set up an elaborate ambush. But ... Zarqawi was late.

The U.S. troops were preparing to leave when his vehicle came into view. He and his driver blew through a Delta roadblock before nearing a Ranger checkpoint. The Ranger M240B machine-gunner had Zarqawi in his sights and requested permission to fire, but the lieutenant in charge of the checkpoint did not give the OK because he did not have “positive ID” of the vehicle’s occupants, a TF 145 source said.

To the intense frustration of other Rangers on the scene, Zarqawi’s vehicle hurtled past, with the Jordanian staring wildly at the Rangers, while wearing a Black Hawk vest and gripping a U.S. assault rifle, the TF 145 source said. Delta operators took up a high-speed pursuit, while a Shadow unmanned aerial vehicle tracked the action from above.

But the Delta men fell victim to bad timing. When he realized he had a tail, Zarqawi’s driver took the vehicle — with Zarqawi inside — off the main highway and onto a secondary road. With the TF 145 operators perhaps 30 seconds behind, Zarqawi jumped out and ran for it, leaving his driver, laptop, and $100,000 in Euros to be captured by the Americans.

As staffers in an operations center tried to vector the chasing Americans toward him using the UAV’s pictures, the Shadow’s camera chose that moment to “reset,” switching from a tight focus on Zarqawi’s vehicle to a wide-angle view of the town. By the time the staffers frantically zoomed the camera back in, Zarqawi had vanished.

It was an extraordinarily frustrating experience for the members of TF 145; they knew how close they had come, and how infrequently such opportunities arise.

Zarqawi also seemed to realize the peril he was in.

“He was sh---ing his pants. ... he was screaming at the driver,” the special operations source said. “He knew he was caught.”

[]

By August, the special operations source said, JSOC forces had captured or killed “upwards of 200” Zarqawi leaders senior enough to have contact with the man himself.

[]

Meanwhile, Zarqawi also hungers for more personnel. “Al-Qaida is trying to get some other people to him through Iran — some planners, some trainers,” the special ops source said.

The Iranian government knows about this, and despite Zarqawi’s violence against fellow Shiites in Iraq, the Iranians have decided to allow the transit of al-Qaida personnel, the source said, calling it “a marriage of convenience.”

do i need to add anything? ROTFLMAO is about the best i can do (and a big shoutout to the guys at Lincoln - nice work, again)