Today, two senior Al Qaeda in Iraq leaders, Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, were killed in a raid on their compound in Salaheddin Province. US intelligence and military forces assisted in the operation.

Vice President Biden appeared at a White House press conference to call the deaths “a “potentially devastating blow” to the insurgency there. The commander of US forces in Iraq, Ray Odierno, reinforced that.

But is the threat of the insurgency the greatest looming problem facing Iraq? It doesn’t seem so. This iteration of Al Qaeda in Iraq hasn’t been much of the factor in the country in years. What does threaten stability in Iraq is the depredations of the ruling party, creating secret prisons for torturing Sunnis and trying to overturn election results voted on by the people. Al Qaeda in Iraq is really a second-order problem at this point, in my opinion.

This development allows Biden and the White House to justify leaving Iraq before that sectarian situation resolves itself. We’ve decided that we’ve won in Iraq, and the death of the two Al Qaeda leaders represents a good data point in that decision. So while Iraqi security forces may have proved themselves somewhat worthy in tracking down and killing these insurgents, the real value of the raid is to let the US military extricate itself from the country. This is desired by the government in Iraq as well, so they’re happy to see this highlighted.

As we have little control over the subsequent events in post-election Iraq, I welcome it as well. But let’s not pretend that this incident has much meaning.

UPDATE: Biden’s full statement.