“In a remarkable statement last November [10, 2006], [al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi’s successor, Abu Hamza al-Masri, thanked President George W. Bush for sending the U.S. Army to Iraq and thus giving al Qaeda the ‘great historic opportunity’ to engage Americans in direct fighting on Arab ground. (He also said that Bush was ‘the most stupid and ominous president’ in U.S. history.) But he warned that the invasion had ‘revived the glory of the old Persian Safavid Empire in a very short period of time.’ “
– Foreign Affairs, The U.S. vs. al Qaeda, Page 195