Al queda in Iraq - before the U S invasion

From the Weekly Standard Blog

A Master Terrorist’s First Days in Baghdad

Before the U.S. entered Iraq.

BY Thomas Joscelyn

The U.S. military has confirmed that the two most senior members of al Qaeda in Iraq were killed in a joint raid conducted with Irhttp://neubworthynotes.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/iran-connection-on-scud-missles-to-hizbullah/aqi forces Sunday morning. The two terrorists killed in the raid are: Abu Ayyub al Masri (aka Abu Hamzah al-Muhajir, the military leader of al Qaeda in Iraq) and Hamid Dawud Muhammad Khalil al Zawi (aka Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, the overall leader of AQI).

“The death of these terrorists is potentially the most significant blow to al-Qaeda in Iraq since the beginning of the insurgency,” General Ray Odierno said in a statement on the official web site for U.S. Forces in Iraq.

Indeed, this is big news. But here is one fact the press is not likely to trumpet: Abu Ayyub al Masri set up shop in Saddam’s Iraq roughly ten months prior to the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. His presence there was tracked by the CIA. The agency was even concerned that al Masri and his al Qaeda compatriots might be planning terrorist attacks outside of Iraq from Baghdad.

Read the rest of this.  It is a long discussion.
Then ponder on this report of scud missiles and Syria. And remember all those reports out of Iraq at the beginning of the war from bloggers inside Iraq who say missiles being trucked in the dark of night over the Syrian border.  Oh no, no WMD's there, either.