Two years after the attacks on the United States, Osama bin Laden's leadership cadre has been isolated and weakened and is increasingly reliant on the violent actions of local radicals around the world to maintain its profile. But the al Qaeda network is determined to open a new front in Iraq to sustain itself as the vanguard of radical Islamic groups fighting holy war, according to European, American and Arab intelligence sources.

The turn toward Iraq was made in February, as U.S. forces were preparing to attack, the sources said.

[...]

"The monster is already near you," said one Arab official who is familiar with the intelligence and who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name or nationality. "I don't know if you can kill it."

The official added: "Iraq is the new battleground. It is the perfect place. It will be the perfect place."

[...]

Crossing Iraq's borders with Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and to a lesser extent with Jordan and Turkey, hundreds of foreign fighters have begun to flow into the country, according to both U.S. and Arab officials.

A U.S. military official said in a recent interview that there were already 220 foreign fighters in U.S. custody in Iraq. But American and Arab officials also said that al Qaeda has not yet coalesced in Iraq, and Zarqawi's mission to form a new network and manage these fighters in the country is still embryonic.

The occupation of Iraq -- once the home of the caliph, or universal leader, of Muslims -- is a galvanizing symbol for radical Islamic groups. On Internet sites and in mosques across the Islamic world, thousands of potential fighters are hearing -- and heeding -- calls to go to Iraq to fight the infidel, according to European and Arab intelligence sources who have tracked some of the movements of the recruits.

[...]

"They are coming," said an Arab official from a country that borders Iraq. "They are coming from everywhere."

[...]

Firm numbers on foreign fighters in Iraq are impossible to come by, but estimates in the intelligence community in Washington on how many have already entered the country range from 1,000 to several thousand. U.S. military officers in Iraq, and officials with the occupying authority led by L. Paul Bremer, say the figure is much lower but don't deny the potential threat the fighters represent or the difficulty of policing Iraq's borders.

[...]

But even in the muted language of those attempting to put the best face on the situation in Iraq, the fear of al Qaeda is apparent. "There is a significant concern about the people moving in here," said a senior U.S. official in Baghdad. "I don't feel they have the capacity right now where they're sitting and organizing and being very strategic." But, he added, it "could be a threat down the line."

There is a lot more in the article, so read it.

Josh Marshall has some comments, which are also (as ever) worthwhile, but it's too late for me to whip up any deep thoughts tonight -- it'll have to wait til the morning.

Update: In a later post, Marshall expresses some doubts about the Iran part of this story (which I didn't include in the excerpt above), based in part on JuanCole's comments about it. But I think Marshall is correct when he writes:

1) The chaos in Iraq has opened the place up to serious infiltration by all manner of bad-actors from around the region -- a development which is not a justification for administration policy, but an example of its failure. 2) The administration is far from weaned of its propensity for using manipulated or just plain bogus intelligence to advance its policy or cover its tracks.

Whatever the current scale of the al Qaeda/radical Islamist presence in Iraq, there seems to be little doubt that they're there, and there's no doubt at all that the Bush administration has created a rallying point for these people such as they haven't had since they first came together to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

Is no one in this administration aware and concerned about the historical parallels? Granted, there's no equivalent power to provide the Iraqi guerillas with weapons and money the way the U.S. did for the mujahadin in their fight against the Soviet Army, but still, it raises the concern that the historical quagmire we should be concerned about is not ours in Vietnam, but the USSR's in Afghanistan.