Al Zarqawi had a long history of terrorism. He was responsible for several bombings and beheadings in Iraq, including Pennsylvania native Nicholas Berg.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In 2002 and 2003, the Bush administration decided against bombing Zarqawi's camp in northern Iraq because it might derail plans to depose Saddam Hussein. By focusing on Zarqawi in his speech at the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell inadvertently spread his fame throughout the Arab world.
I am encouraged by the news today that United States special operations personnel found, identified and killed the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the operational commander of the al-Qaeda led insurgency in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi was the public face of the insurgency.
As far as Zarqawi is concerned, there is a network of extremists; it's not just Zarqawi.
The rise of ISIS starts with a Jordanian thug named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who founded ISIS' parent organization, al Qaeda, in Iraq. What gave Zarqawi the opportunity to create al Qaeda in Iraq? It was, of course, George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
Unlike other Taliban groups, the Haqqanis' approach to mayhem was worldly and sophisticated: they recruited Arabs, Pakistanis, even Europeans, and they were influenced by the latest in radical Islamist thought.
I think Charles Manson was a hair's breath away from just being a terrorist. He wanted to start a war, too.
On one level, bombing ISIS is easy. The U.S. knows where the group operates. There's no need for a ten-year hunt like the one for Osama bin Laden. The terror group has two capital cities: Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. Al-Qaeda never had such an obvious home address.
In the years since 9/11, more terrorists have been created through this President's policies than were captured or killed. There weren't any terrorists in Iraq in 2003, but there are now.
I really started to get a sense of how, if you will, special Zarqawi was, I guess, sort of midway through 2004.
It was Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001, not Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
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