Zarqawi Corpse:
Man, the Rude Pundit can't get enough of the pictures of the Zarqawi Corpse, everywhere, all over your CNNMSNBCFox, any time his name is mentioned, in the corner next to morning hotties, on the front of all your daily rags, there's those close-up pictures, showin' his corpsy face, all dead and bloody and bruised and shit. Shit, at the military briefing, fuckin' photo was framed, man, ready to go over the mantle at Crawford. The only thing that'd be better is if they actually would have had to stitch back together a shattered skull, like a gory jigsaw puzzle, to let us know that Abu Musad al-Zarqawi is really, really, really, dead - see? Get it? He's dead. Took two five-hundred pound bunker busters to do it, but motherfucker's dead.

'Course, oh, sweet jihadi inspiration, Zarqawi wasn't killed instantly. He was alive when troops on the ground went into the ex-house to see who was dead. But motherfucker dies, and, indeed, when evil people die, why not dance a little on their graves? Fuck Zarqawi. He got what he was beggin' for. We got bigger fish to fry.

It was a sign of just how far the President's fortunes have fallen that he didn't have a press conference where he took out the Zarqawi Corpse and danced with it before announcing, "Hey, Osama, lookit what I'm a-gonna do to ya," proceeded by the President of the United States fucking the cold anus of the dead terrorist. Instead of ripping off Zarqawi's arms, tossing one to Donald Rumsfeld, and joyously engaging in a child-like duel, Bush merely stepped to the podium and sighed, like a teenaged football player on a team that's gone 0 and 6 told to act humble after scoring one midseason TD.

The Rude Pundit's gonna miss the bluster that President Bush used to talk about Zarqawi with, elevating this nasty little man, a dwarf in the larger war in Iraq, to an equal status with, say, Saddam Hussein. He's gonna miss the way Bush kept referring to "the terrorist Zarqawi," as if to distinguish him from, for instance, "the Prime Minister Alawi," 'cause we in America can't really tell the difference without the labels.

But at least it frees up some troops from Zarqaqi-huntin' duties. For, as Bush told us in September 2005, U.S forces were going to "focus on hunting down high-value targets like the terrorist Zarqawi." And, as he told us in December 2005, American forces are concentrating on "hunting down the high-value targets, like the terrorist Zarqawi." And, as he told us in March 2006, American and "coalition" forces" are hunting down high-value targets, like the terrorist Zarqawi." Sadly, Bush will now have to learn to pronounce a new Arabic name to make up for the death of his faux arch-nemesis.

But, oh, that is the future, and the present is the image of the Zarqawi Corpse, so very dead - see him? He's dead. Maybe the pictures aren't just bloodlust and craven exploitation. Maybe showing the Zarqawi Corpse so prominently is one way for the Bush administration to say, "See? We're not lying. This time."