Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Murder Victim?

What's it been - fifty-seven hours since the news broke of the much-belated and deserved death of al Qaeda's "emir of Mesopotamia"? And not much less than that since I posted numerous center-right warnings of how the Left and its propaganda apparatus would reflexively twist this latest victory in the GWOT into a heinous Crusader atrocity to feed the propaganda mills of the Islamist enemy?

Here's the latest - call it Zarqawi's "Hadithazation":

U.S. officials have altered their account of the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, saying he was alive and partly conscious after bombs destroyed his hideout, and an Iraqi man raised fresh questions about the events surrounding the end of Iraq's most-wanted militant.

The man, who lived near the scene of the bombing, told AP Television News on Friday that he saw U.S. soldiers beating an injured man resembling al-Zarqawi until blood flowed from the victim's nose.

When asked about the man's allegations, military spokesman Major-General William Caldwell said he would check. In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Jeffrey Gordon said Saturday he was unaware of the claim.

"We frequently receive allegations which prove to be unsubstantiated," Gordon said.

I bet. But the Extreme Media never let substantiation get in the way of a juicy story. Just look at how they got this Iraqi (identified as Ahmen Mohammed in the Washington Post) to embellish his tale:

The Iraqi, identified only as Mohammed, said residents put a bearded man in an ambulance before U.S. forces arrived. He said the man was found lying next to an irrigation canal.

"He was still alive. We put him in the ambulance, but when the Americans arrived they took him out of the ambulance, they beat him on his stomach and wrapped his head with his dishdasha, then they stomped on his stomach and his chest until he died and blood came out of his nose," Mohammed said, without saying how he knew the man was dead.

Uh-huh. The ASSociated Press only wishes that were true. So do I, come to think of it, though I would have preferred Zarqawi's decapitation with an olive fork. Pity he can't be agonizingly snuffed once for each atrocity he committed over the course of his bloodthirsty career.

But that's not what we do. It is, however, what the Extreme Media want Americans to believe the military does, and if they have to turn an enemy mass-murderer into a sympathetic figure to "fight the real enemy" - George W. Bush - well, hell, does anybody with the slightest degree of lucidity doubt for a picosecond that they wouldn't lunge at the opportunity?

Oh, that poor, poor "emir". He had to croak before his lionization in the American press and his induction into the liberal "heroic victim" hall of fame. Somehow deflowering six dozen virgins seems to pale in comparison to hardcore, high-octane dhimmization.

I can only imagine where the Fifth Column (er, Fourth Estate) is going to go with this atonement kick next. Turning the U.S. soldiers at the scene over to the International Criminal Court? Replacing the Constitution with Sharia? Guillotining President Bush in the Capitol Rotunda? Inviting al Qaeda to firebomb the White House? Somehow retreating from Iraq doesn't seem like it'd be enough for these people anymore.

UPDATE: Just as I suspected:

[T]he house where al-Zarqawi last lived was extremely isolated. It was surrounded by thick palm groves that hid it from mud and cement houses a few hundred yards away. The site is also well hidden from the main road four hundred yards away, which cuts through lush green flatlands.

Finding it must have required precise intelligence. The U.S. military has spoken of a painstaking process, including human sources and electronic surveillance, that led them to the house.

Cap'n Ed thusly casts the scene the AP is trying to put over:

So picture this mission as the Americans and Iraqis on the ground must have conceived it. They need to attack a well-hidden house in the middle of a palm grove in Baquba in a way that ensures the occupants cannot escape if the bombing fails to kill them. They know exactly where this house is, drop two bombs on it - and then wait around for the locals to rush into a house they cannot see to dig the bodies out? And having done that, the American soldiers then get around to arriving on scene without any concern about whether their quarry may have escaped, pull Zarqawi out of an ambulance where he is secured, and beat him to death in front of the witnesses?

Uh-huh.

Forget the National Enquirer, Ed; this is al Jazeera all the way.

UPDATE II: The autopsy results are in, and don't corroborate the AP's story.

Further bulletins as they happen!....