Whose Next?

The United States has identified the successor to the late Abu Musab al Zarqawi as the leader in Iraq of al Qaeda. In a televised briefing today in Baghdad, Major General William B. Caldwell IV, a spokesman for the American forces in Iraq, displayed a photograph of a man he said was Abu Ayyub al-Masri. He said he was "probably" the man who was named as the successor to arqawi, the Jordanian terrorist who was killed in an American bombing last week. An Islamic militant Web site said this week that Zarqawi's replacement was a man named Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. But his name was something of a mystery. It did not appear on any of the charts of wanted leaders of Al Qaeda previously issued by the American command. Senior Iraqi officials had said they were unfamiliar with anyone by that name.