WITH THE DEATH of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a great deal of attention has focused on Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the Egyptian-born terrorist that Major General William Caldwell singled out as the “most logical” choice by al Qaeda in Iraq to replace Zarqawi. What all of this attention has missed, however, is what it means concerning U.S. pre-war claims about Iraqi collaboration with al Qaeda.

According to the information provided by the U.S. military, al-Masri traveled to Iraq in 2002 before Zarqawi and established the first al Qaeda cell in the Baghdad area. From both his nationality and connections with al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, it can be reasonably concluded that al-Masri was a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group that al-Zawahiri headed prior to his merger with bin Laden’s organization. This is significant, given the 9/11 Commission report’s cryptic note that al-Zawahiri had “ties of his own” to the former Iraqi regime and al-Masri’s presence in Saddam’s Baghdad.