Is It a Tipping Point?

The detractors at Daily Kos desperately hope not.

Some guy on ABC is saying this is a "nail in the coffin of Al Queda." Bull s***.  This guy was a face, a name, a few menacing lines about impending doom to us.

Well, in addition to being "a face, a name" who has beheaded Americans, who Osama bin Laden called the "Prince of al Qaeda in Iraq", who was the operational leader in the primary theater of the global war on terror, Zarqawi was also the lead instigator of Sunni-Shiite violence.  His recent statements have prized sectarian violence among Iraqis above engaging Coalition forces.

With Zarqawi gone, would-be insurgents have lost their primary recruiter and have seen in grand fashion that all you get for terrorist behavior is dead.  The fact that the intelligence that led to the airstrike came from within Zarqawi's own organization speaks volumes about this growing realization.

What's more, in the hours following Zarqawi's offing, U.S. and Iraqi forces carried out 17 raids in and around Baghdad, which, according to Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, resulted in a "treasure trove" of new intelligence.  If we subsequently see an accelerating round-up of "mujaheds", it should only further cement the notion that the insurgency is being snuffed out, encouraging fence-sitters to get on the winning side, put down the IEDs, rat out the terror leaders, and bask in the freedom, sweet freedom.

Raids, intel gathering, high-level captures, and internal out-ratting should all be positive reinforcement loops, meaning that whenever the insurgency does break, it could well happen in relatively short order - a domino effect triggered by a catalytic event.

Snuffing out the country's top terror leader and elsewhere amassing a treasure trove of intelligence would suggest June 7 might be a good candidate for such a catalyst.