Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the UN of February 5, 2003, “also made a great deal of [al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi’s alleged connection to the radical Kurdish jihadist group, Ansar al Islam, but later analysis has shown few ties with this group or its base camp in Kurdistan. The group never mentions him in its own propaganda, and his main base of activity was in the Sunni strongholds of Iraq, namely, Baghdad and Anbar Province. A senior Jordanian GID [General Intelligence Department] official discounted the story as well: ‘We know Zarqawi better than he knows himself. And I can assure you that he never had any links to Saddam.’ ”
– Bruce Riedel, The Search for Al Qaeda, Pages 97-98