Austin Bay has pointed out that one of the masterminds of the February attack on the Askari Shrine in Samarra, is Haitham al-Badri. al-Badri is reported to be a former operative of Saddam Hussein's regime who later joined Ansar al Islam and al Qaeda in Iraq.

al-Badri was once connected to Saddam’s regime and “later became one of the leaders of Ansar al-Sunna and later al-Qaeda organization in Iraq.” That’s interesting. A Saddam operative conveniently migrates to Ansar al-Sunna (an Islamist group that operated against the Kurds) and ends up with Al Qaeda. This character needs to be arrested and his odyssey from secular Baathist to Al Qaeda cell leader explored. Counter-terror experts know the intel agencies of rogue nations and transnational terrorists ”connect in the sewer” (along with drug dealers, arms traders, organized criminals, smugglers of various stripes,etc). These kinds of gray-area, individual connections are hard to trace– but they occur. Stay tuned.

The extent of how much the former regime elements have intertwined with al Qaeda in Iraq continues to be exposed in the wake of intelligence gains and raids in post-Zarqawi Iraq. A larger list of known Baathists to be working with al Qaeda postwar (and some pre-war) is available here.

Update: The New York Times and Washington Post have both picked up on this story and noted al-Badri's transition from Saddam official to al Qaeda.