At the entrance to the tent, made of bedouin carpets, the banner read: "The wedding of the hero Abu Musab al-Zarqawi." Inside were four rows of plastic chairs arranged on the sandy ground. A dozen or so were occupied. Ants crawled between people's feet.
Guests came to the tent yesterday to pay their respects to the family of Zarqawi, who was killed on Wednesday evening by a US air strike. In the tradition of Islamic martyrs, his wake was being celebrated as a wedding - but unlike most weddings, the atmosphere in the tent was charged with anger, sadness and fear.
Yes, and candy and cigarettes were probably handed out along with lovely warm glasses of chai tea. Of course, that was to the men. The women were somewhere heavily veiled consoling his mother and probably telling her what a great and noble son she had raised for Allah.
At least Dahmer's family had the grace to be embarrassed by such a bloodsucking boil of humanity they had raised and didn't celebrate nary a one of Dahmer's victories over his victims. But, apparently, in the desert bloodsucking serial killers are on their way to a wedding with God. Of course, Islamists being so strict, even in death before Zarqawi can enjoy his buxom girls and handsome boys, he must have a wedding. (yes, if you read the Quran correctly, they aren't getting 72 female virgins, they are getting beautiful girls AND boys to wait on them hand and foot or whatever body part and function is allegedly in need at the time).
Can't even catch a break in hell...er..paradise.
Anyway, they had a lot of extra special guests attending:
After prayers, they gathered in their hundreds in the funeral tent near the house in the Jordanian town of Zarqa where he had lived. Among them were senior commanders of his organisation in Jordan. They listened to a sermon and pledged alliance to the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.
The men, most of them with long bushy beards and dressed in the Afghan salwar kamees, a dress code of jihadis, came from all over Jordan. Some raised mobile phones to record the sermon.
"If a mujahid dies, hundreds of others will replace him," cried Sheikh Jarah al-Qadah an old comrade of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. "We will continue the jihad against the infidels everywhere, in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine ... see my brothers our victories in Somalia now, blessed we are and blessed to give sacrifices like the life of our hero Abu Musab."
According to one noted interviewee, fellows in strange cars and dark glasses drove by several times eying the gathering.
How tempting it must have been to put a UAV laden with hellfire (how appropriate) missiles over the whole affair and resolve some lingering problems. As it is, I hope that we are at least as half as competent at spying as everyone thinks we are and we followed a number of these fellows back to their homes and there about either with humans or with UAVs.
Can you imagine the number of pictures on the surveillance board at this time?
There should be a large number of extremely paranoid people wondering around Jordan these days. Makes me think that, whatever Zarqawi's death is to the political aspects of the day to day insurgency in Iraq, tactically, his death was a giant leap forward. Not to mention the amount of information we collected that probably links us back to a few hundred pieces of network throughout many countries who will shortly be terminated or incarcerated or followed around while they lead us to any number of their contacts.
I just hope and pray that we have enough agents and operatives around that we can handle all the information and work the number of links.
Of course, if you are on the left, you think the whole thing only consists of 10 people anyway so you're not worried, are you?
Any who, read some more about Zarqawi's wedding:
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | 'He is not dead, he is alive with God This is a wedding, not a funeral'
Now ponder who this story is for. Is it for you, reading in the west or was it for the readers in the middle east scouring the print, internet and international news for information on the beloved Emir of Iraq?
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