The Longest War (80 page)

260
local militant leaders
: International Crisis Group, “Pakistan’s Tribal Areas: Appeasing the Militants,” December 11, 2006.

261
200 percent higher
: Jim Garamone, “NATO, U.S., Afghan forces battling Taliban in Afghanistan,” American Forces Press Service, January 16, 2007.
http://www.defenselink.mil
/news/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=2708
; “a steady pace”: Author embed at Bermel base in eastern Afghanistan, September 11, 2006.

261
obvious to the Bush team
: Hadley interview.

261
some $11 billion
: Congressional Research Service, “Direct Overt U.S. Aid and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan, FY2002-FY2009,”
http://www.fas.org/sgp
/crs/row/pakaid.pdf
.

261
“has protected or regenerated”
: National Intelligence Community. National Intelligence Estimates. “The terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland,” July 2007.
www.dni.gov/press_releases/20070717
_release.pdf
.

261
“still in Quetta”
: Author interview with U.S. military official in Kabul, Afghanistan, April 2007.

261
“target folders”
: Author interview with U.S. military official in Islamabad, Pakistan, May 1 2007.

261
nixed a proposed attack
: Mark Mazzetti, “Rumsfeld called off 2005 plan to capture top al-Qaeda figures,”
International Herald Tribune
,
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/08/
news/qaeda.php
.

261
only 11 percent
: Adam Carr Election Archive, Legislative election of 10 October 2002,
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/
countries/p/pakistan2002.txt
; “a piffling 2%”: Adam Carr Election Archive, Legislative election of 18 February 2008,
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/p/
pakistan/pakistan2008.txt
.

262
dropped the corruption charges
: CNN.com, “Bhutto corruption charges dropped,” October 5, 2007.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007
/WORLD/asiapcf/10/05/
pakistan.elections/index.html
.

262
widely believed to have looted
: “Bhutto: corruption charges remain,” CNN.com, October 3, 2007.

262
woman who returned
: She was born in 1953, elected prime minister in 1988, and returned from exile in 2007.

262
targeted the former prime minister in Karachi
: MSNBC, “Blasts aimed at Bhutto kill more than 120,” October 19, 2007.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/
id/21344367/
.

263
“Were they our men?”
: Translated in Martin Fletcher, “Named: the al-Qaeda chief who ‘masterminded murder,’”
Times of London
, December 29, 2007.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/
world/asia/article3105443.ece
; BBC News, “Bhutto’s murder: key questions,” February 8, 2008.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia
/7165892.stm
.

263
authenticated that it was Mehsud’s voice”
: Author interview Western official, Islamabad, Pakistan, January 2, 2008.

263
press conference
: Syed Shoaib Hasan, “Meeting Pakistan’s most feared militant,” BBC, May 27, 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
south_asia/7420606.stm
.

263
killing about fifty-five
: Greg Miller, “Two al-Qaeda suspects believed killed in Pakistan,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 9, 2009.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/
world/africa/la-fg-
terror9-2009jan09.0.4086437.story
; and “Pakistan’s al-Qaeda leaders ‘dead,’” BBC News, January 9, 2009. “
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/
hi/south_asia/7819305.stm
.

263
masterminded by an al-Qaeda leader
: Zahid Hussein, “Usama al-Kini, head of al-Qaeda in Pakistan, killed by U.S. military,”
Times of London
, January 9, 2009,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
tol/news/world/asia/
article5479455.ece
.

264
at the last minute
: Elizabeth Palmer, “Arrests made in Pakistan hotel bombing,” CBS/AP, September 22, 2008.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/22/
terror/main4466838.shtml
.

264
support for suicide attacks
: Pew Global Attitudes Survey, “Unfavorable views of Jews and Muslims on the increase in Europe,” September 17, 2008.
http://pewglobal.org/
reports/pdf/262.pdf
, question 73.

264
nearly 3,000
: South Asia Terrorism Portal, Casualties of Terrorist Violence in Pakistan,
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/pakistan/
database/casualties.htm
; Author email correspondence with Pakistani government official, November 17, 2008; some 1,500: 1,574 coalition casualties 2001–2010:
http://icasualties.org/oef/
.

265
aided by elements of the ISI
: Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, “Pakistanis aided Kabul attack, U.S. officials say,”
New York Times
, August 1, 2008.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/world/
asia/01pstan.html?em
.

265
creeping rapprochement
: For an account of the back channel Kashmir negotiations, see Steve Coll, “The Back Channel,”
New Yorker
, March 2, 2009.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/
2009/03/02/090302fa_fact_coll
.

265
fifth-largest country
: United Nations, World Population Prospects: The 2006 revision.
http://un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/
WPP2006_Highlights_rev.pdf
. p. 47.

266
“Just because you invade a country stupidly”
: Quoted in Thomas Ricks,
The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008
(New York: Penguin Group, 2009), p. 29.

266
“Security may be ten percent”
: Quoted in Neil Sheehan,
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
(New York: Random House, 1988), p. 67.

266
In the summer of 2006
: Sterling Jensen, “Lessons from an Anbar sheikh,”
Washington Post
, September 29, 2007,
http://www.washingtonpost.
com/wp-dyn/content/article
/2007/09/28/AR2007092801554.html
; lanky, intense, 28-year-old Mormon with a talent for languages; author interview with Sterling Jensen, Washington, D.C. November 12, 2008.

267
city of some three hundred thousand
: Ann Scott Tyson, “Troops fight to expand foothold in Ramadi,”
Washington Post
, August 2, 2006,
http://www.washingtonpost.com
/wp-dyn/content/article/
2006/08/01/AR2006080101733.html
; only 100 cops: Tom Bowman, “Sunnis sheikhs join Iraqi police to fight al-Qaida,” NPR, February 19, 2007,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/
story.php?storyId=7486653
.

267
nightmarish mash-up
: author interview with Sterling Jensen.

267
dead people with signs
: Author interview with Sterling Jensen; author interview with Anbar sheik, May 31, 2008, Anbar Province, Iraq.

267
met with
: Jim Michaels, “An Army colonel’s gamble pays off in Iraq,”
USA Today
, May 1, 2007,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-04-30-
ramadicolonel_n.htm
.

267
killed his father and three of his brothers
: Joshua Partlow, Ann Scott Tyson and Robin Wright, “Bomb kills a key Sunni ally of U.S.,”
Washington Post
, September 14, 2007 and Todd Pittman, “Sunni sheikhs join fight vs. insurgency,” Associated Press, March 25, 2007.

267
effectively ruled
: “State of the insurgency in al Anbar,” August 17, 2006.
http://media.washingtonpost.com
/wp-srv/nation/documents/
marines_iraq_document_020707.pdf
.

268
“this is awesome”
: Jensen interview op. cit.

268
“Never interrupt”
: Napoleon Bonaparte, quoted in James Charlton,
The Military Quotation Book
(New York: Macmillan, 2002), p. 93.

268
an aggressive assault
: Jim Michaels op. cit.;
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/
iraq/2007-04-30-ramadi-colonel_n.htm

268
live side by side
: Jim Michaels op. cit.,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/
iraq/2007-04-30-ramadi-colonel_n.htm
; “tactic that had worked”: George W. Bush, Renaissance Cleveland Hotel, Cleveland, OH, March 20, 2006.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse
.archives.gov/news/
releases/2006/03/20060320-7.html
.

268
twenty-nine small outposts
: Greg Jaffe and David S. Cloud,
The Fourth Star
(New York: Random House, 2009), p. 206.

268
fifty thousand soldiers
: Jaffe and Cloud op. cit., p. 163.

269
little or no understanding
: Author observations in Ramadi in June 2008.

269
his face for the first time
: Rob Watson, “First Zarqawi video significant,” BBC, April 26, 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_
east/4947768.stm
.

269
The breakthough
: The account of the interrogations that led to the information about Zarqawi can be found in “The Ploy” by Mark Bowden,
The Atlantic
, May 2007, and also in Matthew Alexander,
How to Break a Terrorist
(New York: Free Press, 2008), especially pages 274–275.

270
“shocked by the death”
: Osama bin Laden, translated by CNN, June 29, 2006,
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/
0606/29/acd.02.html
.

270
reaching a peak around the New Year of 2007
: Department of Defense Multinational Corps-Iraq, Pentagon Press Conference, November 1, 2007,
http://www.defense.gov/DODCMSShare/briefingslide/
317/071101-D-6570C-001.pdf
.

270
“OK, you beat us”
: ‘Matthew Alexander,’ interview by author, Washington, D.C. January 18, 2010.

270
changed its name
: Stephen Negus, “Call for Sunni State in Iraq.”
Financial Times
, October 15, 2006.

270
unsigned oath of allegiance
: Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, Sinjar Documents, Harmony NMEC-2007-637854.
http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/pdf/Combined%
20Orig_Trans/NMEC-2007-637854_comb.pdf
.

270
foreign-fighter flow
: Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, “Al-Qaida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq: A First Look at the Sinjar Records,” Combating Terrorism Center, December 2007; and Brian Fishman (ed.), “Bombers, Bank Accounts, and Bleedout: al-Qaida’s Road in and out of Iraq,” Combating Terrorism Center, July 22, 2008.

270
from around 120 a month
: Jim Michaels, “Foreign fighters leaving Iraq,”
USA Today
, March 21, 2008,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/
2008-03-20-fighters_N.htm
; “around half”: Brian Fishman, “Bombers, bank accounts, and bleedout,” Combating Terrorism Center at West Point,
www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/pdf/Sinjar
_2_July_23.pdf
, p. 7; slowed to a dribble: author interview with Emma Sky, senior official on General Raymond Odierno’s staff in Iraq on September 29, 2009, Washington, D.C.

270
did little for its poor image
: author interview with Emma Sky.

271
“changing course”
: Harmony MNFT-2007-005648,
http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/
pdf/Combined%20Orig_Trans/
MNFT-2007-005648_comb.pdf
.

271
under such pressure
: Amit Paley, “Shift in tactics aims to revive struggling insurgency.”
Washington Post
, February 8, 2008.

271
a wounded organization
: Paley 2008 op. cit.

271
“Beware of division”
: Text available from the NEFA Foundation,
http://www1.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/
nefabinladen1007.pdf
.

271
larger than the size of New England
: Area of New England is 62,806 (U.S. Census Bureau, Quick Facts, 2000) and Anbar is 53,000 square miles U.S. Fed News, “Marines end Anbar mission as Army takes lead,” January 26, 2010. Al-Qaeda also controlled large swaths of other parts of Sunni Iraq.

271
85 percent
: David Kilcullen, “Anatomy of a tribal revolt,”
Small Wars Journal
, August 29, 2007.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/08/
anatomy-of-a-tribal-revolt/

272
100,000 men
: Andrew North, “Sons of Iraq move hailed a success,” BBC, November 18, 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in
_depth/7734978.stm

272
“since 2003”
: author interview with Stephen Hadley, December 15, 2009, Washington, D.C.

272
generally not engaged in sectarian conflict
: Vali Nasr,
The Shia Revival
(New York: Norton, 2007), p. 26.

272
her mounting concern
: Hadley op. cit.

273
“surgios”
: Linda Robinson,
Tell Me How This Ends
(New York: Public Affairs, 2008), p. 28, and author interviews with Hadley, Meghan O’Sullivan, November 6, 2009, Washington, D.C., and Brett McGurk, December 15, 2009, Washington, D.C.

273
behind the back of his boss
: Ricks op. cit., p. 112.

273
standing down
: Author interview with Jack Keane, Washington, D.C., December 16, 2009; and Bing West,
The Strongest Tribe
(New York: Random House, 2009), pp. 108–112.

274
“When you’d sit”
: McGurk interview.

274
two major offensives
: Kimberly Kagan,
The Surge: A Military History
(New York: Encounter Books, 2008), pp. 11–13.

274
was convinced
: O’Sullivan op. cit.; “far less capable”: David Petraeus, interview by author, Washington, D.C., October 7, 2009.