Numerous times over the past few months the Iraqi government as well as military officials with the United States have claimed they came very close to capturing Al Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Stories concerning recieving a tip to a safehouse hours after Zarqawi left have become all too common.

There is however another story in just how close the United States was to capturing Zarqawi and this story is the closest I’ve ever heard and that does include when he was allegedly detained in Fallujah temprorarily by Iraqi soldiers. This time the U.S. military knew where he was and knew were he was going. They set up road blocks to capture him and Zarqawi turned around and ran.

Task Force 626 — the covert American military unit charged with finding Zarqawi — had troops in place to grab the fugitive, and mobile vehicle checkpoints had been established around the city’s perimeter. Another U.S. official said predator drones were also in flight, tracking movements in and around the city.

A source who had been inside the Zarqawi network alerted the task force to the meeting. Officials deem the source “extremely credible.”

The senior military official said that just before the meeting was scheduled, a car was pulled over as it approached a checkpoint.

“Zarqawi always has someone check the waters,” said the official.

A pickup truck about a half-mile behind the car then quickly turned around and headed in the opposite direction. Officials now believe Zarqawi was in the fleeing truck. U.S. teams began a chase, but when the truck was pulled over several miles later, Zarqawi was not inside.

It is what they found inside the truck that U.S. officials believe Zarqawi was in fact inside the truck heading towards Ramadi. Inside the truck there was a computer with a massive hard drive full of information in which authorities are now pouring over and 80,000 Euros (approx. $104,000). It is believed that when this truck went under an overpass Zarqawi jumped out of the moving truck and walked back to Ramadi, quite a hike for a peg-legged Zarqawi. Furthermore they were able to determine which house Zarqawi fled to in Ramadi though when they arrived he was no longer there.

In my view the capture of the computer that was operated by Zarqawi is worth more than Zarqawi’s life. Al Qaida in Iraq have demonstrated their use of technology and the internet for communications throughout the past. Such a computer is likely to have contact information for big wigs in Al Qaida, Al Qaida in Iraq, Islamic Army of Iraq and Ansar al-Sunnah among others. This also could reveal a dirty bomb plot in which intelligence analysts believe Zarqawi is planning to launch in Europe.

We’ve learned through the arrest of Mohhamed Kahn, Al Qaida’s computer communications guy, in Pakistan what can be ascertained from the confiscation of one’s computer. We must now mine the computer for every piece of information possible and I have no doubt U.S. authorities are already on the case.

Update:
On the computer were pictures of Zarqawi. Perhaps those are the ones that CNN released as being new? I’ve got around 20 pictures of Zarqawi and many of them I have not seen before. I’m working on creating some kind of collage for them all and will post them when I find the time and the creative energy to do so.