Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is Dead!

Hooray! Strike up and the band and join the chorus. We've cut off the head of the hydra! It's only a matter of time now, baby, before... uh, before it grows 8 more Zarqawis to replace the one we've cut off. Aw shit...

Worse yet, a live loose cannon like Zarqawi would've remained a controversial, divisive figure among the Iraqis. A dead Zarqawi? Martyr. And everybody loves a martyr.

So as much as I'm personally delighted that we've atomized that vile bushwhacking, beheading fuck - and as much as I regret that his death did not proceed from the ten thousand exquisitely placed cuts over several weeks' time he so richly deserved - I regret that this changes nothing.

We could stake Osama bin Laden's on a pole in the Rose Garden, and the Civil War that is tearing Iraq apart would only continue apace. All W's photo-op posturing to the contrary notwithstanding, taking out Zarqawi is a feel-good moment in the alleged "War On Terror," but it doesn't move the ball forward one inch, and doesn't get our boys and girls back home one minute sooner.

The lunatic we need to replace is the one running our country, and there's still two+ years running on that clock. Until then, if we can wrestle control from the GOP of at least one house of Congress this November, we can cut W off at the knees with investigations into the hundreds of crimes and misdemeanors his administration has been perpetrating with utter impunity in the moral and ethical vacuum created by his party's lock on all three elements of the federal government.

‘Cause here’s the thing: If you cut a hydra off at the knees instead of the head, his legs don't grow back.