Bin Laden regarded the invasion of Iraq as a tremendous gift from President Bush—a “rare and essentially valuable” opportunity to spread jihad, as the exiled sheik put it. Not only had the United States eliminated Saddam Hussein, whom bin Laden reviled as “a thief and an apostate,” but the American occupation was fueling Muslim rage even more than the invasion of Afghanistan had, inspiring throngs of Arab men to join the ranks of al-Qaeda.
