website on September 14: Zarqawi released another tape on September 19, 2005, clarifying some of his September 14 tape, including that his group would not target Sadrists “as long as they do not strike us,” because Sadr’s followers weren’t collaborating with the Iraqi government. Anthony H. Cordesman with Emma R. Davies, Iraq’s Insurgency and the Road to Civil Conflict (Praeger Security International, 2008), 155.
“decided to declare a total war”: “Leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq Al-Zarqawi Declares ‘Total War’ on Shi’ites, States That the Sunni Women of Tel’afar Had ‘Their Wombs Filled with the Sperm of the Crusaders,’” Middle East Media Research Institute, September 16, 2005.
wounded in that day’s blasts: Casualty figures are from “Iraq Timeline 2005,” Council on Foreign Relations, October 13, 2005.
nihilistic revenge on a wide scale: In his July 2005 interview with Al Jazeera, Maqdisi said, “My plan is not to blow up a bar or a movie theater. My plan is not to kill an officer who tortured me. My plan is to restore the nation to its glories and establish the Islamic state for all Muslims” (Brooke, “The Preacher”). Zarqawi acknowledged these criticisms in his July 5 audiotape: “Some of those [ulama] want us to stop our Jihad in Iraq, claiming that the Jihad in Iraq is merely a Jihad which causes harm to the enemy but is not a Jihad that can lead to the establishment of Islamic government, and therefore there will be those who reap the benefit of this Jihad and achieve power at the expense of the blood of the Jihad fighters” (Yehoshua, “Dispute in Islamist Circles”).
three hotels in Amman, Jordan: Michael Slackman and Suha Ma’ayeh, “Attacks at U.S.-based Hotels in Amman Were Minutes Apart,” New York Times, November 9, 2005.
The deadliest attack: Hassan Fattah and Michael Slackman, “3 Hotels Bombed in Jordan; At Least 57 Die,” New York Times, November 10, 2005.
an Iraqi from Anbar: “Bomber’s Wife Arrested in Jordan,” BBC, November 13, 2005.
mingling quietly with the partygoers: “Jordan Says 3 Iraqis Linked to al-Zarqawi Carried Out Amman Bombing,” New York Times, November 13, 2005.
unable to set hers off: Fattah and Slackman, “3 Hotels Bombed in Jordan.”
on hotel luggage carts: Ibid.
claimed responsibility for the attack: “Al Qaeda Explains Amman Bombings,” Middle East Media Research Institute, December 8, 2005.
in and around those buildings: Cordesman, Iraq’s Insurgency, 94. Cordesman notes elsewhere in his volumes the links that began surfacing between jihadists captured in Europe and Zarqawi, such as the eighteen suspected Ansar al-Islam adherents picked up in Germany and the “Chechen-trained group” in Paris arrested in 2002 (ibid., 161).
throughout Jordan, Iraq, and Syria: Hussein, “Al Zarqawi, Part 2.” The Arabic name for this greater Syria region is “Bilad al-Sham.”
forbade Salafists from praying there: Lake, “Base Jump.”
“was an unintended accident”: “Al Qaeda Explains Amman,” MEMRI.
“This is our Achilles’ heel”: Dana Priest reports that upon touring our screening facility at BIAP, I commented, “This is how we lose.” Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State (Little, Brown, 2011), 248.
“information was reported”: “TF 6-26 Update,” FBI e-mail retrieved from “Documents Released Under FOIA,” American Civil Liberties union website, June 25, 2004.