In closing arguments in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, prosecutors said the three men -- Seifullah Chapman, Masoud Ahmad Khan and Hammad Abdur-Raheem -- played paintball in the Virginia countryside to prepare for combat overseas.

Ambassador to Haiti James Foley sneered at outgoing Aristide, painting him in their "poignant" final conversation as directionless and pathetic. "It was as if", Foley said "he was the last guy in the world to figure out that the country would be better off were he to relinquish power."

the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger. “People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late — Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone. “Here’s a case where they waited, they waited too long and now we’re suffering as a result inside Iraq,” Cressey added.