Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi is a longtime associate and collaborator of Usama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants.  Long before the Iraq war, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was aware of a poisons and explosives training center in northeastern Iraq that the al-Zarqawi network is running.

Al-Zarqawi was given safe haven in Baghdad in May 2002 where he went for medical treatment and during his stay established a base of operations with nearly two dozen other extremists.

Al-Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda affiliates based in Baghdad coordinate the movement of people, money and supplies into and throughout Iraq for his network and they've now been operating freely in the capital for several years. From his terrorist network in Iraq, Zarqawi directs his network in the Middle East and beyond.

Zarkawi has often operated from Iran — as proven by court documents in Italy and Germany, and by information gathered by both our military and our intelligence folks in Europe and the Middle East — but he is not Iranian. He's a Jordanian Palestinian, whose basic mission is the overthrow of the Hashemite Monarchy in Jordan.  He is finding Iraq a more slippery stepping stone to his ultimate end than he had expected..