The Longest War

by Peter L. Bergen

  /europe/13INQU.html.

  149 “there was a relationship”: “Bush insists Iraq, al-Qaeda had ‘relationship’,” CNN.com, June 17, 2004. http://www.cnn.com/2004/

  ALLPOLITICS/06/17/Bush.alqaeda/.

  150 home-baked cookies: Alina Cho, CNN American Morning, January 28, 2008. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/

  0801/28/ltm.01.html; George Piro, CBS News, 60 Minutes, January 27, 2008. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/24/60minutes

  /main3749494.shtml.

  150 elicited the real story: Piro op. cit. and author discussions with George Piro in 2008. “Saddam Hussein talks to the FBI,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279, July 1, 2009. George Washington University. http://www.gwu.edu/~

  nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/index.htm.

  150 “No weapons over there”: “Bush’s WMD joke draws criticism,” AP, March 26, 2004. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4608166/.

  150 “We were all wrong”: United States. Senate. Armed Services Committee. “Hearing on the subject of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs,” Washington, D.C., January 28, 2004.

  150 “We haven’t really had”: Dick Cheney interview with M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News, January 9, 2004.

  151 34 million pages of documents: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, September 8, 2006, op. cit.

  151 no “smoking gun”: Institute for Defense Analyses, “Iraqi Perspectives Project: Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents,” September 2007. http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/Saddam%20and

  %Terrorism%20Redaction%20EXSUM%20Extract.pdf.

  151 Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: Hekmatyar had a longtime talent for extracting money from a variety of patrons. By a conservative estimate he received 600 million dollars of U.S. aid via the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, during the 1980s war against the Soviets.

  151 discover a memo: This was a detailed note by the Mukhabarat. Document dated August 18, 2002, Operation Iraqi Freedom, documents collected at U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office, document number iISGZ02004-019920.

  151 no “cooperative relationship”: United States. Senate. Select Committee on Intelligence. Report on whether public statements regarding Iraq by U.S. government officials were substantiated by intelligence information together with additional and minority views. Report 110–345. 110th Congress, 2nd session. June 2008. http://intelligence.

  senate.gov/pdfs/110345.pdf, p. 72.

  152 broadcast the speeches: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence September 8, 2006 op. cit., p. 72. http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf.

  Chapter 10

  153 “There is always an easy”: Henry Louis Mencken: quoted in Bartleby’s, Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1989).

  153 “I will not wait”: George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., January 29, 2002. http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/

  releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html.

  154 “If we wait for threats”: George W. Bush, Address at West Point, NY, June 1, 2002. http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives

  .gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020601-3. html.

  154 A few weeks later: Tenet op. cit., p. 309; Bumiller op. cit., p. 185; and Richard Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), p. 213.

  154 “He doesn’t get it”: Rand Beers interview with author, December 24, 2009, Washington, D.C.

  155 “What we did after 9/11”: Douglas Feith on 60 Minutes, CBS News, April 6, 2008. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/03/60

  minutes/main3992653.shtml.

  155 tendered his resignation: Two months after the invasion of Iraq, Beers would start working for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry as his foreign policy advisor, his first foray into politics after more than three decades of government service.

  155 Bush issued the order: George W. Bush, quoted in Patrick E. Tyler, “U.S. and British troops push into Iraq as missiles strike Baghdad compound,” New York Times, March 21, 2003. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?

  res=9D06E6DC1E31F932A15750C0A9659C8B63.

  155 privatizing state industries: Steven R. Weisman, “Kurdish region in Iraq will get to keep special status,” New York Times, January 5, 2004; James Dobbins, Seth Jones, Benjamin Runkle, Siddarth Mohandas, Occupying Iraq: A History of the Coalition Provisional Authority (RAND: Santa Monica, 2009), p. 217; introducing a flat tax: Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, “Flat tax system imposed on Iraq,” Washington Post, November 1, 2003. On this point generally see Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Life Inside Iraq’s Green Zone (New York: Knopf, 2006).

  156 mandated the removal: CPA orders 1 and 2 from Ali Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace (New York: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 150–157; Ricks op. cit., pp. 159–162. Ricks gives a higher number than Allawi’s 400,000, positing 385,000 members of the armed forces and 285,000 in the Interior Ministry and 50,000 in the presidential security units (p. 162).

  156 “flipped the social”: Donald P. Wright and COL Timothy R. Reese, On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign: The United States Army in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, May 2003–January 2005 (CSI Press: Washington, D.C., 2008), p. 92.

  156 did not secure the massive weapons caches: Raymond Bonner, “Iraqi arms caches cited in attacks,” New York Times, October 14, 2003; and Ricardo S. Sanchez and Donald T. Phillips, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), p. 173.

  156 “open-air bazaars”: Sanchez and Phillips op. cit., pp. 173–174.

  156 “imbalance was staggering”: James Dobbins, et al, Occupying Iraq (RAND: Santa Monica, CA, 2009), p. 99.

  157 “the searching of homes”: Allawi op. cit., p. 186.

  157 “more philosophical than practical”: Sanchez op. cit., p. 238.

  157 the CPA’s hostility: Tenet op. cit., pp. 441–442.

  157 drifted over the four hundred mark: ICasualties.org, U.S. Deaths by Month/Year: January–November 2003: 446 deaths. http://icasualties.org/Iraq/usByYear.aspx

  157 “the Expanding Insurgency in Iraq”: Linda Robinson, Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq (New York: Perseus Books, 2008), p. 7; and James Risen, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (New York: Free Press, 2006), pp. 145–146.

  157 would rise to two thousand: Ricks op. cit., p. 408.

  158 just one of a long series of jihads: Tenet op. cit., pp. 437–438.

  158 “We’re not calling it an insurgency”: Robert Grenier, interview with author Washington, D.C., January 19, 2010.

  158 “pockets of dead enders”: Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Department Operational Update Briefing, Arlington, VA, June 18, 2003; “the more desperate”: George W. Bush, Remarks with L. Paul Bremer, Washington, D.C., October 27, 2003.

  158 “not an insurgency”: Paul Wolfowitz, MSNBC Hardball with Campbell Brown, June 23, 2004; “last throes”: Dick Cheney, CNN Larry King Live, May 30, 2005; “state of desperation”: Dick Cheney, CBS Face the Nation, March 19, 2006.

  159 at least ninety thousand Iraqis: Iraq Body Count, Monthly Table, 2003–2008. Accessed Feb. 5, 2009. http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/.

  159 4.7 million Iraqis: United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, Iraq Country Page. http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html; “largest single movement”: Jennifer Pagonis, United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, Geneva, April 8, 2008; http://www.aims.org.af/services/sectoral/

  emergency_assistance/refugee/unhcr_summaries/

  jul_08/summary1.pdf.

  159 “seem not to make the press”: Donald Rumsfeld, Washingon, D.C., August 9, 2004. http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/

  transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2547.

  159 “terrible ecosystem”: Dexter Filkins, The Forever War (New York: Random House, 2008), p. 294; ribbon cuttings: Filkins op. cit., p.171.

&
nbsp; 159 Some 130 journalists: “Kurdish journalists under assault in Iraq,” Reuters, August 26, 2008. http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/

  idUSLQ27271020080827.

  159 more than double: 63 journalists were killed in Vietnam from 1955–1975: Reporters Without Borders, “Three years of slaughter in Iraq,” March 20, 2006. http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_

  article=16793.

  159 morphed into a fortress: Filkins op. cit., p. 223.

  160 one hundred civilians were dying every day: Unclassified total; from coalition and Iraqi reports, Department of Defense document, author collection.

  160 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: For a good profile see Jeffrey Gettleman and Abu Romman, “Zarqawi’s Journey: From Dropout to Prisoner to an Insurgent Leader in Iraq,” New York Times, July 13, 2004.

  160 whiled away his youth: David S. Cloud, “Elusive Enemy: Long in U.S. Sights, A Young Terrorist Builds Grim Resume,” Wall Street Journal, February 10, 2004.

  160 “he wasn’t that smart”: Betsy Pisik, “Mother denies suspect is terrorist,” Washington Times, February 24, 2003.

  161 “He can fight an army alone”: Hutaifa Azzam, interview by author, Amman, Jordan, September 13, 2005.

  161 worked out manically: Loretta Napoleoni, Insurgent Iraq: Al Zarqawi and the New Generation (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005), pp. 61–70; Fuad Hussein, Al Zarqawi: The Second Al-Qaeda Generation, serialized in Al Quds al Arabi, May 15, 2005, and June 8 to July 15, 2005.

  161 gave an amnesty: BBC News, “Jordan: King endorses general amnesty law,” March 23, 1999.

  161 plotted to blow up a Radisson hotel: Jonathan Finer and Craig Whitlock, “Zarqawi’s network asserts it launched attacks in Amman,” Washington Post, November 11, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/

  content/article/2005/11/10/

  AR2005111002074_pf.html.

  161 did succeed in killing Laurence Foley: “U.S. diplomat killed in Jordan,” CNN, October 28, 2002. http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/

  meast/10/28/jordan.shooting/.

  161 set up a training camp: Fuad Hussein, Al Zarqawi: The Second al-Qaeda Generation, serialized in Al Quds al Arabi, May 15, 2005 and June 8 to July 15, 2005. “Jihadist Biography of the Slaughtering Leader Abu Mus’ab al Zarqawi” by Saif al-Adel, military commander of al-Qaeda which surfaced on a jihadist website on June 20, 2009 and was translated by World News Connection on August 17, 2009. File Number 985 Accession Number 285351362.

  162 Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: ibid.

  162 complexion and accents: Fuad Hussein op. cit.

  162 arrive in Kurdish Iraq: Fuad Hussein op. cit.

  162 Zarqawi traveled: Bundeskriminalarnt (BKA) Intelligence Report, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, April 2002, translated by Steven Arons. Author’s collection.

  162 bombed the United Nations’ headquarters: Ricks op. cit., p. 216; “bombed the Jordanian embassy”: BBC News, “Jordan embassy blast inquiry.” August 8, 2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east

  /3134145.stm; “25 killed in Iraq blast,” The Guardian, November 12, 2003. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/

  2003/nov/12/iraq.italy.

  163 viewed millions of times: Garry Barker, “A war of pictures,” The Age (Australia), May 16, 2004. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/

  2004/05/16/1084646070652.html.

  163 on the tape Berg is: BBC News, “Zarqawi beheaded U.S. man in Iraq.” May 13, 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3712421.stm.

  163 two other Americans: “Video shows American hostage beheaded,” CNN.com, September 20, 2004. http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/

  09/20/iraq.beheading/ and Edward Wong, “Iraqi video shows beheading of man said to be American,” New York Times, September 21, 2004. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/international

  /middleeast/21iraq.html; Jason Burke, “Theatre of terror,” The Guardian, November 21, 2004. http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2004

  /nov/21/features.review7.

  163 living under some form of arrest: U.S. counterterrorism officials, interview by author, Washington, D.C., June 6, 2003.

  163 beloved Syrian mother: Growing Up Bin Laden op. cit., pp. 8–9 and 166.

  164 snakes and scorpions: Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s letter to Osama bin Laden, Coalition Provisional Authority, February 12, 2004.

  164 Zarqawi’s father-in-law: Mary Anne Weaver, “The short, violent life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” The Atlantic, July/August 2006. http://www.theatlantic.com

  /doc/200607/zarqawi/4. “Najaf bombing kills Shiite leader,” CNN.com, August 30, 2003, http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/

  meast/08/29/sprj.irq.najaf/.

  164 the Golden Mosque in Samarra: Fuad Hussein op. cit.; Knickmeyer, Ellen and Ibrahim, K.I., “Bombing shatters mosque in Iraq.” Washington Post, February 23, 2006. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/

  article/2006/02/22/AR2006022200454.html.

  164 in Anbar province: Cloud and Jaffe op. cit., p. 188.

  164 Shia death squads: BBC News, Iraq ‘death squad caught in act,” February 16, 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_

  east/4719252.stm.

  164 soldiers of the 82nd Airborne: “U.S. Troops Fire Back at Iraqi Protesters,” Associated Press, April 29, 2003; and Human Rights Watch, “Violent Response,” June 16, 2003. http://www.hrw.org/en/node/12318

  /section/4; four American security contractors: PBS Frontline, “The High Risk Contracting Business,” June 21, 2005. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/

  shows/warriors/contractors/highrisk. html.

  165 halted by Bremer on April 9: “Marines half offensive operations in Fallujah for negotiations,” Associated Press, April 9, 2004.

  165 was a turning point: Sanchez op. cit., pp. 350–351.

  165 on November 7, 2004: Global Security.org, Operation al-Fajr (Dawn). November 8, 2004. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/oif-

  phantom-fury-fallujah.htm.

  165 thousands of jihadist insurgents: Dexter Filkins and James Glanz, “With airpower and armor, troops enter rebel-held city,” New York Times, November 8, 2004.

  165 since the battle of Hue: Jim Garamone, “ScanEagle proves worth in Fallujah fight,” DefenseLink, January 11, 2005. http://www.defenselink.mil/news

  /newsarticle.aspx?id=24397.

  165 thousands of the city’s buildings were destroyed and hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants fled: Ann Scott Tyson, “Increase security in Fallujah slows efforts to rebuild,” Washington Post, April 19, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/

  articles/A64292-2005Apr18.html.

  165 “Bring’em on”: George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., July 2, 2003, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives

  .gov/news/releases/

  2003/07/20030702-3.html.

  166 “a terrorist magnet”: Ricardo Sanchez, CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, July 27, 2003. http://www.defenselink.mil/

  transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2904; George W. Bush, Greeley, Colorado, October 25, 2004.

  166 “Seems like the reverse”: Interview by author with Art Keller, Albuquerque, New Mexico, February 13, 2007.

  166 National Intelligence Estimate: Declassified Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,” dated April 2006. http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/

  Declassified_NIE_Key_Judgments.pdf.

  166 “plunge into the ocean”: Jeffrey Pool (translator), “Zarqawi’s pledge of allegiance to al-Qaeda.” Jamestown Foundation, Terrorism Monitor, December 16, 2004. http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article

  .php?articleid=2369020; “Mujahid brother”: CRS Report for Congress, “Al-Qaeda: Evolving Statements and Ideology,” January 26, 2006; and Osama bin Laden, audiotape, Al Jazeera, December 27, 2004.

  166 exercise more restraint: Ayman al Zawahiri, letter to Abu Musab al Zarqawi, July 9, 2005. www.rjchq.org/media/pdf/zawahiriletter.pdf.

  166 thirteen hundred foreign figh
ters: Michael Gordon and Mark Mazzetti, “General Warns of Risks in Iraq if G.I.’s are Cut.” New York Times, November 16, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/

  world/middleeast/16policy.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper

  &oref=slogin&oref=slogin.

  166 90 percent Iraqis: Edward Gistaro, Statement for the Record House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Armed Services Committee. Director of National Intelligence, July 25, 2007. http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20070725_testimony.pdf.

  166 more than ten thousand Iraqis: Mohamed Hafez, email to author December 14, 2009.

  166 combined since 1981: Assaf Moghadam Globalization of Martyrdom (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), p. 251.

  166 up to 90 percent: Jim Michaels, “Foreign fighters leaving Iraq, military says,” USA Today, March 21, 2008. http://www.usatoday.com/news/

  world/iraq/2008-03-20-fighters_N.htm.

  166 of the 139 “known” suicide bombers: Author correspondence with Mohammed Hafez, December 14, 2009; and see generally Mohammed Hafez, Suicide Bombers in Iraq (Washington, D.C.: USIP Press, 2007).

  167 61 percent were Saudi: Reuven Paz quoted in Susan Glasser, “‘Martyrs’ in Iraq mostly Saudis,” Washington Post, May 15, 2005.

  167 Of the 606 foreign fighters: West Point, Combating Terrorism Center. “Al-Qaida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq: a First Look at the Sinjar Records.” December 19, 2007. http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/pdf/CTCForeign

  Fighter.19.Dec07.pdf

  168 “as my wedding party”: Will and Testament of a Suicide Bomber, NMEC-2007-637872, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

  168 killing sixty: Hassan Fattah and Michael Slackman, “3 Hotels Bombed in Jordan; At Least 57 Die.” New York Times. November 10, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/10/international/

  middleeast/10jordan.html; “Israeli spies”: PBS News-hour, “Analyzing the Jordan bombings,” November 11, 2005. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/

  terrorism/july-dec05/jordan

  _11-11.html.

  168 highly bureaucratized group: West Point, Combating Terrorism Center, “ Al-Qaida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” 2007 op. cit.