The Wall Street Journal-20080214-Dead in Damascus

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Dead in Damascus

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Given the clandestine nature of the war on terror, it's often hard to know how much progress we're making. But Tuesday's death in Damascus of Imad Mughniyeh looks like an unambiguous victory.

Before Osama bin Laden took the spotlight, Mughniyeh was probably the world's most wanted and elusive terrorist, a man with an FBI price tag of $5 million on his head. He masterminded some of Hezbollah's deadliest attacks in the 1980s and 1990s, including:

-- The 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French soldiers who died in the 1983 truck bombings in Beirut along with 63 civilians, including 17 Americans, who died in the simultaneous bombing of the U.S. embassy there.

-- Robert Stethem, the Navy diver whose beaten body was left on the tarmac during the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847.

-- William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in the mid-1980s.

-- Twenty-nine people who died in the 1992 bombing of Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires and 85 more killed in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish Center in BA.

Mughniyeh died in a car bombing, probably orchestrated by Mossad, though Israel denies it. It'd be nice to think the CIA was up to this, but we have our doubts. The location -- Damascus -- of his killing is of special note, and the private intelligence agency Stratfor reports that he died as he was leaving a meeting at a Syrian intelligence office. Syrian officials surely knew of his whereabouts and could have arrested him if they really wanted some accommodation with the U.S. At least Mughniyeh will kill no more.