Much later, intelligence officials and terrorism experts who studied the early war years marveled at Zarqawi’s strategic cunning. Whether deliberately or by coincidence, he picked targets that would confound U.S. ambitions for Iraq and ensure that the occupation of the country would be long and painful. The opening salvo against an Arab embassy would effectively discourage other Muslim nations from participating in Iraq’s rebuilding in a way that might give the Americans legitimacy. That blow was followed by two others that, in sequence, showed “brilliant strategy,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior
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