Thomas Joscelyn, who has worked extensively to document examples Saddam Hussein's support of al Qaeda, reminded readers not to forget what Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was doing back in 2002.

Citing the Senate Intelligence Report, which investigated the assassination of Laurence Foley, Joscelyn notes:

We know that the planning for the murder took place, in part, during Zarqawi's time in Baghdad. That he and his co-conspirators were moving around regime-controlled Iraq (not just Kurdistan!) with ease. That weapons came from an unspecified location in Iraq. And that one member of Zarqawi's network traveled "repeatedly between regime-controlled Iraq and Syria after March 2002." All of this and the CIA told the Senate Intelligence Committee's staffers that neither of the suspects discussed Zarqawi's ties to the Iraqi regime, nor was there any evidence of Saddam's complicity. Right. Zarqawi was in Baghdad. Baghdad. You know, Saddam's neo-Stalinist capital where any suspicious activity was ruthlessly monitored and suppressed. And yet, Zarqawi wasn't dissuaded from staying for several months. Nor was he dissuaded from planning Foley's assassination while in Baghdad.

Craig Whitlock, of the Washington Post, wrote that Iraqi agents did in fact arrest some of Zarqawi's affiliates during this time, only before releasing them and warning them that the Jordanian government was looking for them. Perhaps, some of the captured members of Zarqawi's former crew, Ansar al Islam, who have spoken out about the former regimes assistance to Iraq, can fill the intelligence vacuum as to what level of "tolerance" Saddam Hussein's regime had for those who would plan and launch attacks on innocent Americans in neighboring countries.