Dean's World

Apparently, it's the guy behind the 2006 kidnappings of our soldiers:

Al-Tunisi was a leader in helping bring foreign terrorists into the country and his death "is a key loss" to Al Qaeda leadership there, Anderson told a Pentagon news conference.

"He operated in Yusufiyah, southwest of Baghdad, since the second battle of Fallujah in November '04 and became the overall emir of Yusufiyah in the summer of '06," Anderson said in a videoconference from Baghdad.

"His group was responsible for kidnapping our American soldiers in June 2006," Anderson said.

He won't be doing any more kidnapping, due to his new full-time occupation of dirt napping.

He said an associate of al-Tunisi's was captured in one mission on Sept. 12 in Baghdad and another with links to him was captured Sept. 14 in Mahmudiyah when coalition forces targeted the network that facilitates the flow of foreign fighters in the southern belts around Baghdad.

More associates were captured over the next few days. On Sept. 25, commanders received information that a meeting was taking place near Musayib with al-Tunisi and other Al Qaeda in Iraq members. A U.S. Air Force F-16 aircraft attacked the target.

No doubt we'll get a few days of front page coverage of the soldiers responsible for demoting al-Tunisi to a lower plane of existence, with fawning questions from the press corps like "Do you consider yourselves heroes?" and "How does it feel to kill an important Al Qaeda operative that was kidnapping your fellow American soldiers?" It's really kind of sad how much positive press war heroes get, while so many more important stories involving OJ Simpson and Paris Hilton go tragically undercovered.