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Terrorist Burial Site Up for Debate

The issue this week in fighting terrorism as far as Iraq is concerned, aside from the ongoing fight against murderous insurgents dedicated to mayhem and destruction, is where to bury arch-terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zarqawi, a Jordanian by citizenship, might end up being buried in an unmarked grave in Iraq instead of his native Jordan. This is due in part to the admitted responsibility (by Zarqawi) that his ?Al-Qaeda in Iraq? carried out a series of hotel bombings in Amman, and also due to the fact that there are many radical elements in Jordan that see al-Zarqawi as a martyr to emulate.

And it is for this reason that an umarked grave is seen as best for the arch-terrorist. Without knowledge of where Zarqawi is buried, terrorists in Iraq cannot make it into a shrine similar to the way in which the Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat?s grave turned into a shrine for the failed terrorist in the city of Ramallah. Arafat died in a French military hospital, far from the land throughout which he had effectively ordered the deaths of thousands of innocents, in 2004.

The United States is keen to not allow Zarqawi to be used in death as a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda much as he was in life. In the end, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed by two 500-lb. U.S. bombs in a terrorist safe-house in Iraq that wasn?t so safe for terrorists after all, might go down in history as yet another failed terrorist who managed to take a lot of lives before he himself was killed. Or, he may simply be forgotten amongst whoever rises up to take his place ? for instance, the Egyptian terrorist known as al-Masri.