BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. This week, the dead face of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was enlarged and mounted in a gold frame by the Iraqi government, and the media displayed it like the trophy it was. NBC's Brian Williams.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: American children will see it during the dinner hour and ask who that is and why that man is in that state. It'll be shown around the world. It'll be shown, notably, around the Arab world.

BOB GARFIELD: It was another Iraq mission accomplished.

PRESIDENT BUSH: The ideology of terror has lost one of its most visible and aggressive leaders. Zarqawi's death is a severe blow to al Qaeda.

BOB GARFIELD: But how severe is it? For three years, the Bush Administration has portrayed Zarqawi as the evil nexus between al Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgency, but other experts claim his role was inflated, both by the White House and by Zarqawi himself. It seems to have been in both their interests to enlarge the image of this small-time Jordanian crook, turned Jihadist, turned terror mastermind. The question now is what image will survive him and how it will affect the war on terror. Bruce Hoffman holds the RAND corporate chair in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, and is editor-in-chief of the journal, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. He says Zarqawi would be thrilled with the coverage this week, given that three years ago, he was a complete unknown.

BRUCE HOFFMAN: And in a relatively short span of time, I think abetted by very clever use of 21st century media, the Internet in particular, digital photography as well, that he was able to catapult to an infamous notoriety, but a notoriety where the Zarqawi brand was as well known as that of Bin Laden in al Qaeda. And I think probably today that he would take tremendous satisfaction as many people go online, laud him, praise him, and promise and pledge to avenge his death and to carry on the struggle.

BOB GARFIELD: Now, isn't the idea of the gilt-edged framed death portrait the [LAUGHS] very way that the Islamacist faithful lionize dead martyrs?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: Yes, exactly, and I believe that was always Zarqawi's goal, is that he went to Iraq to become a martyr. And I think he understood that his martyrdom would ensure that he would have as great, if not greater, resonance in death as he has had in life. Otherwise, he would have been content to direct the insurgency from afar, but instead, he was fighting in the front lines.

BOB GARFIELD: So I could understand how the U.S. military might have a tin ear for this sort of imagery, but how in the world could the Iraqi military have, assuming this is a mistake, made such a mistake?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: The highest imperative, of course, was to depict Zarqawi's death and to demonstrate to other Iraqis that their most homicidal enemy was dead, and that this was a success of the security forces that are out to serve the people and protect the people. And I suspect in the rush to demonstrate that, attention may not have been paid to how his image conceivably could be interpreted or even used by his allies or active or even would-be supporters.

BOB GARFIELD: Now, as treacherous and deadly as he was, Zarqawi also was quite useful for the administration. The Washington Post reported a couple of months back, uncovering some documents, suggesting that U.S. strategy was to intentionally overstate Zarqawi's role, presumably because he was a foreigner, a Jordanian, who operated under what he called "al Qaeda in Iraq," which lent credibility to the long-since discredited idea, still clung to by the White House, that Saddam Hussein was in league with al Qaeda. With him out of the picture, won't it be harder for the administration to explain the violence and the chaos in Iraq?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: Zarqawi, I think, often remained one step ahead of his opponents in that in recent months he deliberately refashioned his al Qaeda organization in Iraq to be predominantly Iraqi. In fact, upwards of 90 percent of its members were Iraqi, in stark contrast to three years ago, when probably the reverse percentage was foreign fighters to Iraqis. And in that sense, I think Zarqawi will leave a lasting legacy of having created really, not quite single-handedly but pretty much, an Iraqi domestic Jihadi constituency, that even without him, you have Iraqis, who were predominantly secular, now have been animated by his religious call and will carry on fighting, even without the figurehead.

BOB GARFIELD: It's clear that Zarqawi positioned himself as a great religious warrior, and the U.S. administration portrayed him as a kind of evil mastermind. In the end, who do you think has won the PR war here?

BRUCE HOFFMAN: Unfortunately, I suspect it's Zarqawi, because I think his fundamental message is, firstly, thug makes good, that you too can have a seismic effect on, indeed, history by resorting to acts of unmitigated violence and terrorism. I think he also, in a sense, comes ahead in the PR struggle because he demonstrated, especially with the grotesque beheading of Nicholas Berg two years ago, that he can bypass the traditional media, that terrorists don't necessarily need the regular television, radio or newspapers; but rather, even when we hesitate to broadcast the most heinous scenes of violence, he understood that by using the Internet, you can create a buzz, that you can still have that enormous power of horror and shock that terrorism seeks to achieve. And in that sense, I think he is one of the figures that has made the Internet, particularly in the 21st century, the means of communication par excellence or favored by terrorists and insurgents everywhere.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, on that depressing note Bruce, thank you very much.

BRUCE HOFFMAN: You're very welcome, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Bruce Hoffman is author of the revised and expanded Inside Terrorism, recently republished by the Columbia University Press.