Another big get for the military:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday that an Iraqi intelligence team had found and killed al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri.

Maliki said the team had also killed Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the purported leader of al Qaeda’s local affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq.

The claims, which followed a March 7 election that produced no clear victor but which Maliki hopes will give him a second term, were not immediately confirmed by the U.S. military, which Maliki said had conducted DNA tests on the bodies.

Of course the right will spin this into a failure of the Obama administration by this evening.