Coalition Gains Insight Into Iraq's Foreign Insurgents

The young Saudi drifted about the lawless Iraqi-Syrian border in the chaotic aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein, seeking a place where he could channel his urge for holy war. He made it to a training camp in the immense desert of western Iraq, U.S. officials say, before infiltrating the country’s Sunni Muslim heartland. He was captured late last year, the sole survivor of a squad of three Arabs from outside Iraq who launched a virtual suicide attack on a U.S. checkpoint east of here. Military officials say Mohammed Kadir Hussen’s odyssey from his hometown, Jidda, to the battlegrounds of Iraq — a journey outlined in a diary seized when he was arrested, a document now known as “the Book” — provides a glimpse into what remains one of the murkiest aspects of the Iraq insurgency: the role of foreign jihadists, or so-called holy warriors of Islam. Full Story