Zarqawi's information and life

The Special Forces would have ways of killing Z-Man that an autopsy would not find. Their motto is secrecy, secrecy, secrecy. Well, the other motto other than to liberate the oppressed. The SF guys, if they believed Z-Man was going to live, would probably not have done anything extra to comfort Z-Man and it is possible that if they believed if Z-Man was going to live, they unilaterally decided that he had to die. After all, all the insurgency information was on his laptop, and Z-Man would be in the hospital, not available to "interrogation". So it is not like you can get any useful actionable intel from this guy.

Whether it turned out that bombs explosively decompressed Z Man's lungs, requiring no outside intervention, or the SF troopers made sure Z Man died and that an autopsy would not find the truth, is unknown.

The SF isn't regular army. Regular Army would not have creatively interpreted their orders to mean "make sure Z Man dies if you see him". Regular army follows orders, and does nothing without those orders. The SF are different, whether Delta or SEAL.

You are not going to be able to interrogate z man for his knowledge of organization, if he survived, mike. The media will be posting guards on him 24/7, any interrogation you want to do will turn out to be TORTURE of a DISABLED HELPLESS man VICTIM to the US stormtroopers.

Actionable intel is actionable intel. Once it was on the news that z-man was captured, every freaking terroist in every pocking hole in Baghdad is going to leave their safe houses and be on the move. You won't find any of them even if you got the information, because it would be too late. This is the fog of war. Getting the information from z man's house and laptop, was actually better than interrogating z man for it, believe it or not. Thus is the age of the information superhighway. Useful, but like any technology, it has two edges. One for you, one for the enemy.