Reply #49: All the biographies dispute that... [View All]

Here's one--> (I've read others very similar.)
http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=ZARQAWI-PROFILE-06-08-06&cat=II
snip-->

"Al-Zarqawi: From street tough to terrorist

By LISA HOFFMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
June 08, 2006

In his youth, he was a street tough in a poor mining town in Jordan, a hard drinker and a brawler.
A school dropout, he was jailed as a teenager for drug possession and sexual assault.

It was during that time behind bars in Jordan in the mid-1980s that Abu Musab al-Al-Zarqawi
lit his inner flame of Islamic radicalism that would, ultimately, lead him to the top ranks
of Islamic extremists and infamy as America's most-wanted man in Iraq.

U.S. 500-pound bombs Wednesday night brought to an end al-Zarqawi's two-year reign
as the ruthless chief of "al Qaeda in Iraq," killing the bald and bespectacled man in an air
assault on an isolated safe house near the Iraqi city of Baquba.

Born Ahmad Fadhi Nazzal al-Khalayleh on Oct. 20, 1966, al-Zarqawi's path to the top ranks
of terrorism began with his exposure in jail to Islamic extremists dedicated to the overthrow
of Jordan's monarchy.
He served seven years for conspiring against the government and earned a reputation for violence there.

He took the name al-Zarqawi when he signed on to the broader causes of establishing Islamic republics
and the eradication of Israel,
according to analyses by the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York think tank, and other experts.

At 20, he joined the battles in Afghanistan against Soviet invaders.
By 1999, he had allegedly formed a terror training camp there for Jordanians,
which was loosely allied with Taliban extremists and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.
While in Afghanistan he was convicted in absentia for a failed plot to bomb tourist hotels in
Amman, Jordan, during the millennium celebrations.

By 2000, al-Zarqawi had developed a reputation for expertise in toxic weapons -
particularly the poison ricin - and explosives,
a skill he reportedly shared with Islamic extremist recruits at his training camp." <--snip

continued.....

I'm sure you can find similar biographies.