A useful report on Zarqawi’s death which suggests his death may not be the end of it, by my old college mate Shaun Waterman at UPI:

“Daniel Byman, an analyst at the Georgetown University School of Foreign
Service, said that uncertainty was due in part to differing views about
exactly how unified the movement Zarqawi led was. “The assessments (of
expert observers) about how much control Zarqawi really had varied from
‘He was instrumental,’ to ‘He was just the guy we knew about, but not
especially important,'” Byman told UPI.

“A U.S. counter-terrorist official told UPI that al-Qaida in Iraq was
“fairly decentralized” and that Zarqawi had “laid out strategy (for the
whole movement) but depended on regional emirs to conduct operations on
a day-to-day basis.”

“But he said the “street credibility and charisma” that shaped Zarqawi’s
relationships with other leading militants across the country would not
be easily duplicated. “They are scurrying to deal with his loss,” the
official said. “They may have identified a successor but it is not going
to be easy to replace someone with those attributes.”

“The official suggested that using a new alias might be a way of trying
to protect the new leader, given the reports that Jordanian intelligence
had penetrated the organization. “They could be figuring it might not be
prudent to disseminate the real name” yet, he said.

“Anytime you have leadership change in a violent underground
organization there’s the potential for splits,” added Byman when asked
about Bartlett’s remarks.

“But he cautioned the news might not be all good, saying Zarqawi’s
leadership “may have at times been counter-productive” for the jihadi
movement, because of his “sectarianism and exceptionally violent
tactics.”

“It’s possible a better leader may emerge” to succeed Zarqawi, he said.”

Well, if it is a natural formation someone’s going to look pretty stupid..

Credit to Anthony Harding for taking the trouble, after his critical letter in the Times back in April, to take a look in person at the site.
 
Here’s how it’s been reported on the Bosnian Pyramid website:

“Anthony Harding, head of the European Association of Archaeologists and a professor of archaeology at the University of Exeter in Britain, has claimed that the pyramidal formations found at Visoko are natural rather than man-made structures.

“Harding made a brief visit to Visoko – he is reported to have spent just 15 minutes at the site, on his own – prior to announcing his conclusions in Sarajevo. He is reported as saying, “My opinion and the opinion of my colleagues is what we saw was entirely geological in nature.” He added, “You’d be surprised how many natural stone formations can look as if they are man-made.”

“His statement is, however, opposed by a number of reputed international specialists, including Egyptian geologist Aly Abd Alla Barakat of the Egyptian Mineral Resources Authority, who has more than 20 years of experience working on the pyramids in Egypt. He has concluded that the structure is a pyramid similar to those found in Egypt.”

On Barakat’s credibility it’s worth highlighting the recent blogged comment on 8 June from Doug Weller that when you ‘google’ on Barakat and cambyses and “you will find that he confused sand dollar fossils with human fossils. The Mexican stone balls are natural (http://tinyurl.com/pan4w) and that the Costa Rican ones are not, but they aren’t terribly old either  (http://www.ku.edu/~hoopes/balls/faq.htm)”.