The Assassins' Gate (72 page)

Dr. Butti's decision depended on what would happen in the next few months, and on the formation of a new government. He didn't have much hope for improvement any time soon, but he was looking for some sign of stability. “Or it will go into a civil war, and all will be lost, and there will be nothing to be done here anymore. It's either this year or none.” He added, “Not one of the Iraqis believes that you should leave tomorrow. Believe me. Even the Sunni leaders—they announce it in the media, but that's for, let's say, public use. They know that we can't have the American army leaving the country right now, because, excuse me to say, George Bush did a mess, he must clean it.” He shrugged and smiled, in his pained way. “We are attached in a Catholic marriage with our occupiers. It's not able to have a divorce.”

He walked me outside into the sunlit garden. On the street a car passed slowly by. For an hour, I had forgotten to be afraid, and now that we were saying goodbye I was reluctant to go. In the past we had always shaken hands, but on this occasion Dr. Butti kissed my cheeks, in the Iraqi way. Perhaps he felt, as I did, that we might not meet again for a long time.

May 2006

N
OTE ON
S
OURCES

This is mainly a book of reporting. Dozens of Americans, Iraqis, and others allowed me to interview them, follow them around, and learn from them. Some people gave me many hours or even days of their time. They are too many to be named here, and a few wouldn't want to be, so at least the published version of my thanks will have to remain collective and anonymous.

In addition to interviews, I depended for information and insight on the Iraq coverage in the world press, especially
The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Newsweek, Time, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly,
Knight-Ridder, the Associated Press, Reuters,
The Telegraph, The Guardian
and
The Observer, Le Monde, Corriere della Sera, The Daily Star
of Beirut, the Stanhope Centre's
Iraqi Media Developments Newsletter,
and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's
Iraqi Press Monitor.
I was also helped by the publications and Web sites of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations, the United States Institute of Peace, the Brookings Institution, the Royal Institute for International Affairs, and the Middle East Media Research Institute. I regularly read a number of Iraqi blogs, especially
www.healingiraq.blogspot.com
, and I also benefited from information and links on
www.andrewsullivan.com
,
www.juancole.com
,
www.warandpiece.com
, and the “Iraq'd” blog of
The New Republic.

The following books and articles were also useful:

Fouad Ajami,
The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation's Odyssey.
New York: Pantheon, 1998.

Hanna Batatu,
The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq.
London: Saqi Books, 2004 (3rd ed.).

Gertrude Bell,
The Letters of Gertrude Bell: Vols. I and II.
London: Ernest Benn, 1927.

Paul Berman,
Terror and Liberalism.
New York: Norton, 2003.

Richard A. Clarke,
Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror.
New York: Free Press, 2004.

Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay,
America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy.
Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003.

Larry Diamond,
Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq.
New York: Times Books, 2005.

David Dudley, “Paul's Choice,”
Cornell Alumni Magazine,
July/August 2004.

James Fallows, “Blind into Baghdad,”
The Atlantic Monthly,
January/February 2004.

Franklin Foer and Spencer Ackerman, “The Radical,”
The New Republic,
December 1, 2003.

David Fromkin,
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East.
New York: Henry Holt, 1989.

Thomas X. Hammes,
The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century.
Osceola, WI: Zenith Press, 2004.

Seymour M. Hersh,
Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.
New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Robert Kagan,
Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order.
New York: Knopf, 2003.

Robert Kagan and William Kristol (eds.),
Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy.
San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000.

Mark Lilla, “Leo Strauss: The European” and “The Closing of the Straussian Mind,”
The New York Review of Books,
October 21 and November 4, 2004.

Kanan Makiya,
Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising, and the Arab World.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.

———,
Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991 (rev. ed.).

James Mann,
Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet.
New York: Viking Books, 2004.

Jane Mayer, “The Manipulator,”
The New Yorker,
June 7, 2004.

Yitzhak Nakash,
The Shi'is of Iraq.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.

David Rieff, “Blueprint for a Mess,”
The New York Times Magazine,
November 1, 2003.

Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf (eds.),
The Iraq War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions.
New York: Touchstone, 2003.

Sam Tanenhaus, “Bush's Brain Trust,”
Vanity Fair,
July 2003.

Charles Tripp,
A History of Iraq.
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2002 (2nd ed.).

Lawrence Weschler,
Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Bob Woodward,
Plan of Attack.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

David Wurmser,
Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein.
Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Press, 1999.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

I AM ABOVE ALL GRATEFUL
to the Iraqis who worked with me, in extenuating circumstances, in Iraq. Those who can be named here are Omar Abdelkhader, Ali Fadhil, Ali Hussein, Qais al-Jalili, Dhia al-Lamy, Omar Salih, and “Serwan.” They kept me alive and allowed me to get to know their country, for which they have my deep thanks. I am also grateful for the hospitality of my friends at the Baghdad bureau of National Public Radio and of
The New York Times.
I also thank Tom Rhodes and Tamam Zeidan of USAID for their hospitality in Basra. Ranya Kadri of Amman always got me in and out of Iraq safely.

The editors of
The New York Times Magazine
first put me on the Iraq story, and for that I thank Katherine Bouton, Megan Liberman, Gerry Marzorati, and Adam Moss. For my four trips to Iraq and the chance to write about the subject at length and in depth, I owe a great debt to
The New Yorker
and especially to its editor, David Remnick, to Dorothy Wickenden, and to my editor at the magazine, Daniel Zalewski. I also thank Virginia Cannon, Bruce Diones, Pam McCarthy, Lauren Porcaro, and the fact-checking department, especially Nana Asfour, Gita Daneshjoo, Allison Hoffman, Raffi Khatchadourian, Nandi Rodrigo, and Andy Young.

Kathy Anderson, my agent, has provided consistent support. Douglas Gillison did conscientious work as a research assistant. At Farrar, Straus and Giroux, I am grateful for the work of Wah-Ming Chang, Cary Goldstein, Debra Helfand, Cynthia Merman, Jeff Seroy, Annie Wedekind, and above all Jonathan Galassi, who is a great friend as well as editor.

Thanks to these friends for sharing and enriching my Iraq obsession: Deb Amos, Jon Lee Anderson, Dan Bergner, Paul Berman, Robyn Creswell, Dexter Filkins, Bill Finnegan, Annie Garrels, Marcela Gaviria, Jeff Goldberg, Philip Gourevitch, Feisal Istrabadi, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Fred Kaplan, Kanan Makiya, Scott Malcomson, and Ammar al-Shahbander. I thank my mother and sister for their love and support through nerve-racking absences and their unfailing interest in my work. Laura Secor gave this book and its author the full measure of her love and intelligence. For that I owe her my greatest thanks.

I
NDEX

The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

Abbas, Mohamed

Abdelkhader, Omar

Abdel-Rahman, Omar

Abdul-Zahraa, Mufeed

Abid, Abdul-Zahra

Abid, Raad Shaker

Abid, Shirku

Abizaid, John

Abood, Abdul-Khadem Hussein

Abrams, Elliott

Abu Ghraib prison

Adams, John

Adams, Ron

Adelman, Kenneth

Aflaq, Michel

Ajami, Fouad

Akbar, Fakheraldin

Ali (translator)

al-Qaeda: Cheney on Saddam's WMD for; in guerrilla warfare in Iraq; nihilism of; 9/11 and; Saddam and; Wahhabi members of, and Ashura bombings

American Enterprise Institute (AEI)

Amin, Bakhtiar

Annan, Kofi

antiwar movement in U.S.

Arab Baath Socialist Party; American support for; attempted burning of records by; Butti in; debaathification of members of; 1968 coup by; rumors compiled by

Arabization of Kirkuk

Arafat, Yasir

al-Araji, Hazem

Arendt, Hannah

Armitage, Richard

Aseel

Ashura festival; 2004 bombings of

Assassins' Gate

Assyrian Christians.
See
Christians

Atatürk, Kemal

al-Awad, Zaydan Halef

al-Awadi, Sheikh Emad al-Din

Azzam, Abdullah

Badr Brigade (Badr Organization)

Baghdadi, Saad

Baghdad University

Baker, James

Baker, Nicholson

Barnes, Fred

Barzani, Massoud

Barzani, Mustapha

Basra

al-Basry, Mohamed

Bayatli, Ali

Becker, Jordan

Bell, Gertrude

Bennett, William

Berger, Sandy

Berman, Paul

Biden, Joseph

bin Laden, Osama

Blackwill, Robert

Blair, Tony

Blix, Hans

Bloch, Marc

Bloom, Allan

Bodine, Barbara

Bolton, John

Bourne, Randolph

Bouvier, Jean-Bernard

Brahimi, Lakhdar

Bremer, L. Paul (Jerry), III; background of; leaves Iraq; Powell and; prison system and; on troop levels in Iraq; United Nations and; uprisings and

Briggs, Sir Harold

Brigham, Latrael

British troops

Brooke, Francis

Brooks, David

Brownback, Sam

Brownlee, Les

Buchanan, Patrick

Bulgarian troops

Burke, Edmund

Bush, George H. W.; Abrams pardoned by; attempted assassination of; call for Iraqis to rise by; as foreign-policy realist; Kurds and

Bush, George W.: Aseel's letter to; author's proposed Iraq policy for; creating reality in White House of; on democracy in Iraq; elections insisted on by; exit strategy sought by; Garner congratulated by; on insurgency; Iraq War planned by; messianic notions of; military service of; “mission accomplished” of; neoconservative staff of; 9/11 and; in Shiite propaganda; tax cuts of; 2004 campaign of; on Vietnam War; yes-men and yes-women to

Bush Doctrine

Butti, Baher

Cabrera, Veronica

Cagan, Leslie

Cambone, Stephen

Campbell, Les

Camus, Albert

Caraccilo, Dom

Card, Andrew

Carney, Timothy

Carter, Jimmy

Casey, George

Castle, Scott

Cevallos, Albert

Chafee, Lincoln

Chalabi, Ahmad; background of; debaathification and; Feith and; Free Iraqi Forces of; official support of; after U.S. dumped him

Chalabi, Salem (Sam)

Cheney, Lynne

Cheney, Richard; background of; Chalabi and; DPG and; on liberation of Iraq; Makiya and; military deferment of; 9/11 and; on WMD

Chomsky, Noam

Chou En-lai

Christians

Churchill, Winston

Clark, William

Clarke, Richard

Clay, Darrell

Cleveland, Robin

Clinton, Bill; foreign policy of; Iraq policy of

Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA); collapse of credibility of; end of; understaffing of;
see also
Bremer

Cohn-Bendit, Daniel

Collis, Simon

Communist Party, Iraqi

constitution, Iraqi; interim

Conway, James

Cordesman, Anthony

Crocker, Ryan

Dafir

Daniels, Mitchell

Dawa Party

Dawood, Emad

Dawood, Luna

Dawood, Saad

Dean, Howard

Dearlove, Sir Richard

Defense Planning Guidance (DPG)

democracy: compared to well-functioning army; ethnic warfare as strategy against; in Iraq; Islam and; in Middle East; neoconservatives and; Zarqawi's denunciation of;
see also
elections

DeMuth, Chris

Dettman, David

Diamond, Larry

Di Rita, Larry

Diwaniya

Dodd, Christopher

Dole, Robert

Dora

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

Duelfer, Charles

Dwitch, Abdul-Jabbar

Edwards, John

elections; in Basra; Bush's insistence on; nationwide results of; Saddam's; Sistani on

al-Emara, Youssef

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Erbil

Erdmann, Andrew P. N. (Drew)