"A Very Good Day In Iraq"

We got him. There is one less murderous madman in the world, thanks once again to the U.S. Military:

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq who led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and kidnappings, has been killed in an air strike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday, adding that his identity was confirmed by fingerprints and a look at his face. It was a major victory in the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the broader war on terror.

YES! Let the Left continue to boast that the Iraqis don't want us over there. Further down in the article:

Al-Maliki said the air strike was the result of intelligence reports provided to Iraqi security forces by residents in the area, and U.S. forces acted on the information.

Iraqi residents helping us out? How can that be? The liberal reaction to this news should be very telling. I can hear it now...."Fine, but why didn't they get bin Laden too??"

THANK YOU to the brave men and women over there protecting us. And thanks, Jim, for the post below regarding the soldiers praying. I love those pictures.

God bless America!

JASmius adds: a roundup of center-right blogospheric reaction:

Austin Bay
Tom Bevan
President Bush
Darth Queeg
Tony Blair
Ed Morrissey
Michelle Malkin
Mark in Mexico
Powerline
Iraq the Model
Anchoress
Let Freedom Ring
Everything I Know Is Wrong
Mudville Gazette
Andy McCarthy
NRO
Jim Geraghty
Mark Levin
David Frum
John Tabin
James Poulos

Meanwhile, on the Dark Side, the ASSociated Press does its best to downplay Zarqawi's well-earned demise, as do spooked & cowed American generals. But the best reaction comes, as always from the Donk grassroots, which are described at being "irked" at this signature victory in the GWOT:

Reacting to the news, one visitor to the Daily Kos complained that using military force to kill Zarqawi "violates everything my America stands for."

"It violates the rule of law and invokes the rule of force in what should be a criminal, not a military, matter."

Another [Kos-hack] was irked because he thought the news would benefit President Bush:

"No doubt Karl Rove will have the sock puppet president acting as if he personally dropped the bomb that killed that jackass," he wrote. "But other than a couple of photo ops of Bush looking cocky, it does nothing because two more tin-plated Zarqawi's will pop up."

A third Kos poster suggested that there was little difference between the top al-Qaida terrorist and the leader of the free world, writing: "Now [that] we are rid of one murderous tyrant - how about the removal of another one - believed hiding in a safe-house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?"

Over at the Democratic Underground, reaction to news of Zarqawi's death was also negative:

"Convenient too that this would happen now," complained one [DUmmie]: "Guess we should just all forget about that Haditha mess, the fact that we are approaching 2,500 dead and the fact that our economy is in big trouble."

Another [DUmmie] poster said that killing the al-Qaida chief really wasn't such a big deal, insisting:

"Zarqawi was a fringe group of al-Qaida, and definitely not responsible for the bulk of the insurgency and civil war now occurring in Iraq. Any gains that they hope to receive will be short-lived when reality strikes home."

All the ingredients of their electorally crippling mental irregularity are still a-percolating - defeatism, Ameriphobia, arrogance, billiousness, tinfoil-hat conspiracism. As John McIntyre wrote yesterday:

[O]ne of the greatest liabilities the Democratic party has today, especially in the politics of a post-9/11 world when we are at war and where the average Jane and Joe American rallies unapologetically around the American flag, is the blatantly anti-American attitudes so prevalent on the left. It is just a killer liability.

But perhaps THE poster child for sheer lib idiocy is the peacenik father of the beheaded Nicholas Berg, who had the following to say about the dearly departed:

"I see more death coming out of al-Zarqawi's death," Michael Berg told the ASSociated Press after learning a U.S. air strike had killed the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq....

Nicholas Berg's father, a pacifist who is running for Delaware's U.S. House seat on the Green Party ticket, said al-Zarqawi's death is likely to foster anti-American resentment among al-Qaida members who feel they have nothing left to lose.

He dismissed the notion that al-Zarqawi's death might bring him closure.

"First of all, I'm not even certain that al-Zarqawi even killed my son," said Michael Berg, who doesn't believe the videotape of his son's execution or what he's been told by the FBI any more than he believes conspiracy theories suggesting his son was killed by the U.S. government.

"I think the news of the loss of any human being is a tragedy. I think al-Zarqawi's death is a double tragedy," he said. "His death will incite a new wave of revenge. George Bush and al-Zarqawi are two men who believe in revenge."

Berg said "restorative justice," - such as being forced to work in a hospital where maimed children are treated - could have made al-Zarqawi "a decent human being." [emphases added]

Kinda speaks for itself, doesn't it? But Mary Katherine Ham elaborates anyway.