ZARQAWI IS DEAD -- (Extensions of Remarks - June 08, 2006)
* Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, last night, at 6:15 p.m local time, our special operation forces, using Iraqi tips and intelligence, executed the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
* Mary Anne Weaver, a reporter for Atlantic magazine, traveled to Zarqawi's hometown and spoke with the people who watched him grow up. ``Everyone that I spoke with readily acknowledged that as a teenager al-Zarqawi had been a bully and a thug, a bootlegger and a heavy drinker, and even, allegedly, a pimp in Zarqa's underworld. He was disruptive, constantly involved in brawls. When he was fifteen, ..... he participated in a robbery of a relative's home, during which the relative was killed.''
* Moving from street thug with an arrest record for violence and imprisonment for sexual assault into a profession, Zarqawi obtained a job as a video-store clerk, from which he was quickly fired. After losing this job, he undertook his first of many trips into Afghanistan, where he found justification and an outlet for his violent nature through Islamic jihad. In 1994, Zarqawi was imprisoned for possession of grenades in the basement of his home. It was during his fifteen year imprisonment that he built his following, and after his release he commenced his litany of terror acts.
* To see the most compelling evidence of this man's evil, look at the record of his actions.
* Beginning in 2003:
* October 28th, Lawrence Foley, United States diplomat and administrator of aid programs in Jordan, is gunned down outside his home; August 19th, top U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 23 others are killed in a truck bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Iraq;
* And then in 2004:
* March 2nd, He orders coordinated explosions at Shiite mosques in Karbala and Baghdad, killing 181 people; May 11th, Zarqawi beheads Nicholas Berg, a Pennsylvania engineer; June 22nd, South Korean hostage Kim Sun-il is beheaded; June 29th, Georgi Lazov, 30 years old, and Ivaylo Kepov, 32 years old, are kidnapped and beheaded; August 2nd, Murat Yuce of Turkey is executed on video; September 13th, Durmus Kumdereli is beheaded; September 14th, 47 Iraqis waiting in lines for jobs are killed by a Zarqawi car bomb attack; September 16th, Kenneth Bigley, Jack Hensley, and Eugene Armstrong are kidnapped and beheaded; September 30th, 35 children and seven adults are murdered by Zarqawi's bombs as U.S. soldiers hand out candy at the opening of a new sewage treatment plant in Baghdad; October 30th, Shosei Koda, 24 years old, is beheaded.
* In 2005:
* February 28th, 125 Iraqi National Guard recruits are murdered by a Zarqawi follower in a suicide attack; November 9th, Zarqawi coordinates three suicide bombings of hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing 60 people, including a wedding party.
* Zarqawi received judgment for his actions last night, and his reign of terror and violence is over. Yet, while we are pleased that this man's murderous influence in Iraq is over, we must not view his death as a moment to rest in our efforts, or as a sign that our job in Iraq is finished. According to the article in Atlantic magazine this week, Mary Weaver's contact, a high level Jordanian intelligence official, ``If Zarqawi is captured or killed, the Iraq insurgency will go on.'' Mary Weaver also interviewed a man who had witnessed the fervor of support among a radical fringe in Iraq. ``He [a young boy] was from Saudi Arabia and had just turned thirteen. I noticed him in the crowd at a recruiting center near the Syrian- Iraqi frontier. People would come and register in the morning, then cross the border in the afternoon by bus. I first saw him at the registration desk. The recruiters refused to take him because he was so young, and he started to cry. I went back later in the day, and this same small guy had sneaked aboard the bus. When they discovered him, he started to shout `Allahu Akhbar!'--`God is most great!' They carried, him off. He had $12,000 in his pocket--expense money his family had given him before he set off. `Take it all,' he pleaded. `Please, just let me do jihad.' ''
* In this war on terror, unlike a traditional state to state war, we must accept that the death of a leader does not end the conflict. On the contrary, the death of such a high profile figure could provoke isolated terror cells to increase violent attacks. We may well see a rise in insurgent attacks in the coming weeks, and we must continue our intelligence efforts in the area to locate and put pressure on these cells, and support our military as they pursue and eliminate them. Persistent hearts will achieve this victory, and I encourage the American people to steel themselves for this continued battle with evil, and to support our military as they bring about a free and stable Iraq.
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