Abu Ayyub al-Masri (Radio Free Europe photo)

In today's Weekly Standard, Dan Darling notes an important comment made by Major General William Caldwell in one of the press conferences discussing possible successor's to al Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Caldwell told reporters that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and close affiliate of al Qaeda's number 2 man Ayman al-Zawahiri, was in Iraq in 2002, before Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Darling finds the importance of this revelation is that it coincides with what CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Armed Services Committee well before the 2003 invasion:

TENET: The argument--the specific line of evidence and argument we have made is they're providing safe haven to him. And we know this because a foreign government approached the Iraqis twice about Zarqawi's presence in Baghdad, and he disappeared. The second troubling piece of this, sir, is, as I mentioned yesterday, the two dozen other associates and two senior Egyptian Islamic Jihad associates that's indistinguishable from al Qaeda because they merged there. And the third piece I'd say to you is Baghdad's not Geneva. It is inconceivable that these people are sitting there without the Iraqi intelligence services knowledge of the fact that there is a safe haven being provided by people to people who believe it's fairly comfortable to operate there. That's as far as I can take the story today.

Darling also adds that al-Masri's relationship to al Qaeda's leadership in Afghanistan and Zarqawi in Iraq were both strong, countering the notion that al Qaeda's leadership and Zarqawi viewed each other as foes instead of partners.