NOW CAN WE GO HOME?

Al-Zarqawi killed, defense and interior ministers approved.

For Mr. Maliki, the killing of Mr. Zarqawi brought immediate political results in the form of parliamentary approval, immediately after the news conference, of Mr. Maliki's nominees for the vacant security posts in the cabinet, the ministers of defense, interior and national security. After the prime minister's repeated failures to win agreement of contending groups within the government on earlier nominees, he stood at the podium in the parliament chamber and presented the three men who emerged from weeks of overlapping vetoes by the main Sunni and Shiite political groups.

Tags: al-Zarqawi killed, Iraq war