An "eyewitness" named only Mohammed - must be like Brazilian soccer players, only going by one name - claims that Abu Musab al Zarqawi was pulled from an ambulance by US troops and beaten to kill him.
The Iraqi, identified only as Mohammed, said he lives near the house where al-Zarqawi was killed. He said residents put a bearded man in an ambulance before U.S. forces arrived.
"When the Americans arrived they took him out of the ambulance, they beat him on his stomach and wrapped his head with his dishdasha, then they stomped on his stomach and his chest until he died and blood came out of his nose," Mohammed said, without saying how he knew the man was dead.
That description sounds fabricated, particularly if it occurred with not necessarily friendly witnesses around, but, then again, many methods were required to finish the job on Grigory Rasputin.
During the fateful last evening of Rasputin's life, the conspirators drugged, poisoned, beat and shot him. Yet the staretz survived all these and actually died by drowning when his body, wrapped in a carpet was thrown into the Moika Canal on the Neva River.
The most appropriate responses to such accusations at this time are tempered, such as this.
Asked about the claim that U.S. soldiers may have beaten al-Zarqawi after the attack, Caldwell said he would check. In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Jeffrey Gordon said Saturday he was unaware of the claim.
"We frequently receive allegations which prove to be unsubstantiated," Gordon said.
There's another heralded event that may also fall into that category ultimately. For Zarqawi the press will most likely believe Mohammed (the witness, not the Prophet) over the military, even after autopsy results are known, though I hope they prove me wrong. It used to be enough during a war to take out the bad guys. Not any more. Now you have to do it in gentlemanly fashion, and you'd better do it so that the press can verify every step you took.
