Wonkette

Maybe it’s irrelevant, but did they get that professionally framed?You know who the real winner is now that al-Zarqawi’s gone? The people of Iraq? No, they’re pretty much still screwed. It’s the editors of The Atlantic, who have a huge Zarqawi profile in their July/August issue, conveniently added to the website yesterday. Abu Musab al-Zarqari: Terrorist mastermind, total idiot.

Abu Muntassir (who would also later break with al-Zarqawi) was his editor. Al-Zarqawi was “a terrible writer,” he told me, “and didn’t really understand the Koran. He had learned it by rote.” Even today, al-Zarqawi cannot write a fatwa, Abu Muntassir said, and as a result has had to set up his own fatwa committee in Iraq.

How embarrassing. Say what you will about Moktada al-Sadr, the guy writes a catchy fatwa.

The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi [The Atlantic]