IRAQ: While the killing owes a lot to bomb pyrotechnics, leaked intelligence also played its part, writes Tom Clonan
Wednesday's precision air strike on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his spiritual adviser, Sheik al-Rahman, appears to have been the result of a combined Iraqi and US intelligence effort.
A US special forces team - Task Force 145 - acting on a tip-off from Iraqi sources, is said to have identified Zarqawi's safe house 8km (five miles) north of Baquba early on Wednesday afternoon. Task Force 145 - under the direction of US Joint Special Forces Command - is a unit whose sole mission is to locate and neutralise "high-value" or VIP insurgent targets within Iraq.
The unit is believed to be colocated alongside 101st Airborne units at Balad air base in the US Multinational Division North area of operations outside Baghdad.
It is believed that leaders of the main insurgency groups in the so-called "Sunni Triangle" - predominantly Baathist loyalists - were incensed by recent mass killings of fellow Iraqi Sunni Muslims by fanatical foreign "jihadis" loyal to al-Qaeda and al-Zarqawi.
In response, it is believed that details of a pre-arranged meeting between Zarqawi and his spiritual adviser were leaked to US forces.
It is also claimed Jordanian intelligence corroborated the Iraqi tip-off, helping to further locate Zarqawi's safe house through analysis of a propaganda film released by him in April of this year.
Task Force 145, relying on this fast-moving combination of intelligence and timing, would have been very conscious of previous attempts by US forces to eliminate prominent high-profile targets by air strike.
In the early hours of March 20th, 2003, the invasion of Iraq began with an intelligence-driven attempt to "decapitate" the Iraqi regime by means of a combined cruise missile and 2,000lb bomb attack on one of Saddam's safe houses. The attack - which was too late - failed to kill Saddam but flattened a large area of down-town Baghdad.
A further attempt to kill Saddam by air strike in July 2003 employed four massive "bunker-buster" bombs which destroyed a number of houses in the Mansour district of Baghdad. The crater left by these munitions measured 40m (130ft) wide by 20m (65ft) deep and US forces - had they successfully "neutralised" the Iraqi leader - would have been faced with the prospect of conducting an intensive forensic search for minute particles of DNA to confirm Saddam's death.
Subsequent to these attacks, the US military developed a particularly lightweight missile, the GBU-38 JDAM (Guided Bomb Unit 38, Joint Direct Attack Munition) specifically for use in urban environments such as those in Iraq.
This missile was designed to provide "focused lethality" - it was a less clumsy and more accurate, smart, laser-guided weapon - and to be launched by air at small "point-destruction" targets.
US forces used two such missiles on Wednesday to kill Zarqawi. They "neutralised" their target but did not completely destroy the evidence.
US troops from the 101st Airborne were able to fingerprint Zarqawi and photograph his face for the domestic and international audience.
As Iraqis brace themselves for a possible backlash from al-Qaeda in the coming days, the US military will perhaps take heart from what may be the emergence of a split within the insurgency in Iraq.
Tom Clonan is the security consultant of The Irish Times