On June 7, 2006, at 6:15 p.m., two American F-16s launched a missile strike against a house surrounded by palm trees, fifty-five miles northeast of Baghdad. The aircraft dropped two 500-pound laser-guided bombs on the house. Six people were killed; one of them was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Iraq had had a new prime minister since May, leader of the first full-term government since the fall of Saddam Hussein. For the first time in Iraq’s history, the country’s top leader, chosen after an election, was a Shia. Nuri al-Maliki
