How desperate are things in Iraq?

So desperate that the US military and the "Iraqi government" are willing to announce that they've killed their bogeyman. And the lapdog press is lapping it up, based entirely on reports from the military and the puppet government. That Zarqawi and his supposed "al Qaeda in Iraq" organization were hyped by aggressive PR, that he may well have been dead for three years--none of this makes its way into the reports from the NY Times or the Washington Post (the paper which ran the story about the Pentagon's hyping of Zarqawi back in April).

Eight months from now we'll find out that "Zarqawi" and his seven dead associates were actually fourth graders or something. The Post gets so excited it probably wet itself:

His killing is the most significant public triumph for the U.S.-led coalition since the 2003 capture of Saddam Hussein.

Anyone who believes these latest lies should ask himself: Isn't the military capable of using tear gas or some other non-lethal way of capturing suspects, especially ones who supposedly lead massive terrorist organizations that they would like to break up? If al Qaeda in Iraq is really a massive terror organization, wouldn't the military want to interrogate its leaders, rather than just kill them and lose their secrets?

That would make sense only if you believe all of the lies. Bush and Maliki desperately needed a "triumph" (which in Iraq seems to be synonymous with "murder"), so they "killed" their bogeyman.