An important fact to remember, now that President Bush is making frequent associations between Al Qaeda in Iraq and the perpetrators of 9/11. Al Qaeda did not exist in the country before the 9/11 attacks. The Sunni group thrived as a magnet for recruiting and a force for violence largely because of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which brought an American occupying force of more than 100,000 troops to the heart of the Middle East, and led to a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.
