Top AQI Terrorists Killed

It has taken several years of hard work, but the top two leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq have been confirmed killed in a joint U.S./Iraqi operation:

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced Monday that two top insurgent leaders had been killed, including a somewhat mythic figure who has operated under the name Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. Mr. Baghdadi has been reported dead or detained several times previously, and his very existence had been called into question a few years ago by American military leaders.

After Mr. Maliki’s press conference, the American military released a statement verifying that Mr. Baghdadi was killed in a joint raid between Iraqi and United States forces in the dark hours of Sunday morning near Tikrit, near Saddam Hussein’s hometown.

Also killed, according to Mr. Maliki and American officials, was Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, also known as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely Iraqi group that includes some foreign leadership.

The simple fact of the matter is that al-Baghdadi was a fictional character when he began, and was a voice played by an actor. Later a former officer-turned-terrorist picked up the moniker, and it is this second al-Baghdadi that was killed.

al-Masri's death was the most important of the two, but it was nice that both were terminated together, which should serve to fragment the group further.