uncharted.ca

It's about time!
Now let's get that Bin Laden fellow.

Al-Zarqawi's body was taken to a secure location, visually identified by "scars and tattoos consistent with what had been reported and what we knew about him," and by fingerprints, Caldwell said. "We have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Zarqawi was in the house. It was 100 percent identification."

The enlarged picture on view of AZ's dead face shows no visible burn. How is that possible?

Didn't the pictures only show his head?
Perhaps they found the rest of him a few feet away!

Somebody's been watching too much CSI .

Didn't the pictures only show his head?

On a cold and blustery evening in December 1989, Huthaifa Azzam, the teenage son of the legendary Jordanian-Palestinian mujahideen leader Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, went to the airport in Peshawar, Pakistan, to welcome a group of young men. All were new recruits, largely from Jordan, and they had come to fight in a fratricidal civil war in neighboring Afghanistan—an outgrowth of the CIA-financed jihad of the 1980s against the Soviet occupation there.

The U.S. military says intelligence agents pinpointed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by following his spiritual adviser and deputy to a safehouse in Iraq.

Major General William Caldwell says the militant's adviser was identified by "somebody inside the al-Zarqawi network."

cm unless cnn is telling you something different, the last I heard was that the head is where the face is located.

QUESTION: Will an autopsy be performed?

CALDWELL: They, in fact, have done some analysis of his body. I'll have to make sure I have the proper definition of what was done with Zarqawi's body, but I know they have done some kind of analysis. And I'll get that for you.

QUESTION: Two quick questions. How can you be sure that Zarqawi died as a result of the wounds he received from the explosion without a formal autopsy?

And secondly, when you were cleaning him up did you have to Photoshop his face or anything to make him more recognizable for the picture?

CALDWELL: To take your second question first, yes, his face was very, very bloodied. And we made a conscious decision that if we were going to take photographs of him and make them available publicly like we did in the press conference that we were going clean him up.

Despite the fact that this person actually had no regard for human life, we were not going to treat him in the same manner. And so, they did clean his face up for the shots that were shown publicly.

As far as the autopsy goes, I know that there was, quote, "an autopsy" done, but I'll go back and make sure it was performed by the certified kind of person that we're supposed to have so we can call it an autopsy and make sure I'm exactly correct before I tell you that.

QUESTION: I was unclear whether you said it was six including Zarqawi that was killed, or whether Zarqawi makes seven.

And secondly, was there any plastic surgery used to reconstruct his face, to make it more presentable before yesterday's news conference?

CALDWELL: That number is six, which includes Zarqawi. So it's not seven, but just six total.

There was none that I know of. I'll verify that by going back and asking the question, but I did not see it stated anywhere that, in fact, that had occurred, so I don't think it did. But I'll verify that for you.

QUESTION: General, everybody's asking the question how possibly could he have survived seemingly intact after two 500-pound bombs were dropped on that facility.

Was he outside? Was he thrown clear? Is there any visibility on why he was able to survive those two bombs?

CALDWELL: Well, that's the exact same question I asked today when I sat down with several Air Force officers, to include some that were associated with the whole operation.

And they assured me that there are cases when people, in fact, can survive even an attack like that on a building structure. Obviously, the other five in the building did not, but he did for some reason.

And we do not know -- and I've looked through the report -- as to whether or not it was because he might have been right outside or whatever. We just don't have that granularity.

I wasn't claiming that his face was somewhere other then his head.
Smart-Ass.

Timing is everything. And to the managers of the Iraq War, perception has always trumped reality. From the beginning it was a war of media stunts—the attempt to assassinate Saddam with 50 cruise missiles before the invasion, the Shock and Awe, the bringing down of the statues, Jessica Lynch, Saddam in the hole, the purple fingered Iraq election and many events staged for media consumption.