Smoking? You need to come up with new catch phrase. I remember that you were using it back in 2006 when I EXACTLY predicted the results of the 2006 elections and won a bet here of several hundred dollars. Not bad for someone who supported a kook, eh? How'd you do in predicting that election by the way?
To the extent that there were Al Qaeda in Iraq before Saddam fell, they were in the Kurdish areas. Bush showed absolutely no interest in getting them even though Kurdistan was our defacto ally at the time. Al Qaeda didn't enter the picture in the rest of Iraq until after the U.S. invasion. Even then, Al Qaeda never represented more than a small fraction of the insurgency.
Most of the peoplle killing Americans then were the folks who are now in the Awakening Councils. Interestingly, the Awakening Councils members could have been bribed much earlier to turn their guns on Al Qaeda (who they already beginning to fight) but Rumsfeld showed no interest in giving them the cash. Of course, the folks in the Awakening Councils still hate Americans as much as ever and are rapidly expanding their powr as local kingmakers in the Sunni areas. Ain't no way that Maliki is going to integrate them in the iraqi army.
Worth the read about when al-Zarqawi came to Iraq. Remember that they 9al-Qaeda) planned the assassination of Diplomat Foley in Jordan from a base camp in Iraq before the Iraq war.
Al Qaeda Plans Terrorist Attack in Chemical Weapons against Jordan