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 Military was confident al-Zarqawi's time was upBy Arwa Damon  CNN Video Correspondent Arwa Damon BEHIND THE SCENESIn our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news and analyze the stories behind the events.
SPECIAL REPORT
• Interactive: Who's who in Iraq
• Interactive: Sectarian divide
• Timeline: Bloodiest days for civilians
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSNEW YORK (CNN) -- "Damn," I thought to myself after hearing the news that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been killed. "I should have listened to them." "Them" being the military unit that I was embedded with in Baquba, Iraq, about a month and a half ago. "We are going to get al-Zarqawi here," they had joked with me. There had been reports that he had come through Diyala province on a number of occasions, spending a few days here and there. But then again there were always reports of al-Zarqawi sightings and intelligence. From Kirkuk in the north, Baghdad, south of Baghdad, al Anbar province -- he seemed to have been everywhere. I remember chatting one evening with some of the senior commanders at one of the joint Iraqi-U.S. camps in Baquba. The topic was al-Zarqawi and whether he was still alive. When I called them this morning and exchanged e-mails, they said, "You missed the big story up here again, gotta work on that timing thing!" One major who was there last year said, "Can you believe this? We leave, you're out of country and look what happens right in our old backyard." On that embed, I was actually in Hadid, a small town right next to Hibhib, nestled in the palm groves, with one main road that wound through, on a clearing operation with the Iraqi army and a MiTT -- Military Transition Team -- through the area. It was a few days after a series of attacks across the province and the commanding general of the Iraqi army brigade wanted to teach the people of the area a lesson. He said the Iraqi army and the tribal leaders had come to an agreement. No IED -- homemade bombs known by the military as Improvised Explosive Devices -- no ambushes, no killing in the area and the Iraqi army would stay out. But the day before the operation, an IED had detonated, wounding two Iraqi army soldiers. "They broke their promise" he said. "So we are going in now." That day was deceptively eventless. Little did I know that al-Zarqawi himself would be killed there in a U.S. airstrike weeks later. In the evenings, hot and sticky, we would often debate -- among other things -- the degree of influence and control al-Zarqawi had over the insurgency as a whole, how much support he had, where he was or could be hiding, and what would happen if he was killed or captured. The military often questioned how much power and influence he actually wielded and how responsible his organization was for much of the violence. There was a growing belief that he was losing support among what the military calls the "home-grown" insurgents and with the Iraqi population, as more and more innocent civilians were killed. His network also was blamed for sparking sectarian violence in some areas -- and though he was not dismissed, there was the belief that he was not as powerful as his image suggested. But there was begrudging acknowledgment in the U.S. military that the insurgents had the upper hand in the "IO game" -- information operations. They get news and images out faster than the Americans. No one can say what will really happen now that al-Zarqawi is dead, but as one military commander put it on the phone this morning, "Yesterday was a very good day, but it will not change the fight." 
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