The Longest War (81 page)

274
“I told friends”
: McGurk interview.

275
“communal civil war”
: Stephen Biddle, “Seeing Baghdad, thinking Saigon,”
Foreign Affairs
, March/April 2006.

275
did not feel he made any headway
: Keane interview.

275
“
without exception
”
: O’Sullivan interview.

276
John Nagl
: Author interview with John Nagl, Washington, D.C. December 9, 2009.

276
Conrad Crane
: Conrad Crane, “Minting COIN,”
Air & Space Power Journal
, Winter 2007.
http://www.airpower.maxwell
.af.mil/airchronicles
/apj/apj07/win07/crane.html
.

276
David Galula
: Nagl op. cit. and Crane op. cit.

276
“The population becomes the objective”
: David Galula,
Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice
(Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1964), p. 52.

277
“We had a vetting”
: Crane comments at a conference hosted by New York University at a panel chaired by the author, November 20, 2009.

277
new ideas
: Crane 2007 op. cit.

277
“Sarah’s influence”
: Nagl interview, “FM-324 available in hard copy,”
Small Wars Journal
, May 8, 2007.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/
blog/2007/05/-fm-324-thenew/
.

277
a serious review
: Richard H. Schultz and Andrea Dew, “Counterinsurgency, by the book,”
New York Times
, August 7, 2006.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/
opinion/07shultz.html
.

277
The doctrines
: FM-324, pp. 1–29.
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/
army/fm3-24.pdf
.

277
“Paradoxes”
: FM-324, pp. 1–27.
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/
army/fm3-24.pdf
.

278
“thumping”
: George W. Bush, November 8, 2006.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/08/bush.
transcript3/index.html
.

278
dumped … Rumsfeld; installed in his place
: “Bush replaces Rumsfeld to get ‘fresh perspective,’” CNN.com, November 9, 2006.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/
POLITICS/11/08/rumsfeld/
.

278
“We need to try”
: McGurk interview.

278
increasingly alarmed
: Hadley interview.

279
“tourniquet”
: Author interview with Fred Kagan, Washington, D.C., November 17, 2009.

279
“force generation” model
: Kagan interview; the first of the group’s reports is available from AEI, January 5, 2007.
http://www.aei.org/docLib/20070111_
ChoosingVictoryupdated.pdf
.

279
“He is a Sphinx”
: Kagan interview; December 11: Jack Keane, interview by author, Washington, D.C., December 16, 2009.

280
fundamentally disagreed
: Keane interview and author interview with Ray Odierno, Washington, D.C., December 14, 2009.

280
Bush also met privately
: Biddle, Cohen and Keane interviews by author.

280
“unbelievably somber”
: Author interview Stephen Biddle, Washington, D.C. November 9, 2009.

280
“I was very blunt”
: Author interview with Eliot Cohen, Washington, D.C. December 10, 2009.

281
“We got around”
: Keane interview; “the knowledge space”: Biddle interview.

281
“he was quizzical”
: Keane interview.

281
Iraq Study Group
: United States Institute of Peace, “Iraq Study Group Report,” December 6, 2006.
http://media.usip.org/reports/iraq_study
_group_report.pdf
.

282
“If we do this”
: O’Sullivan interview.

282
On December 13
: Bob Woodward,
The War Within
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), pp. 286–289.

282
Hadley recalls
: Hadley interview.

283
“we need more troops”
: O’Sullivan interview and Odierno interview.

283
Around the same time
: Woodward, op. cit. p. 295.

283
all five brigades as soon as possible
: Odierno interview; “Petraeus agreed”: Petraeus interview by author, Washington, D.C., December 18, 2009.

283
“does this guy want to win or not?”
: McGurk interview.

283
the new surge
: Eventually the surge would involve 30,000 soldiers.

283
twenty thousand soldiers
: George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., January 10, 2007.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/rele
ases/2007/01/200701 10-7.html
.

283
“I am not persuaded”
: Barack Obama, interviewed by Keith Olbermann, January 10, 2007.

283
more or less the entire Democratic party
: Jonathan Karl, “Troop surge already underway,” ABC News, January 10, 2007.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/IraqCoverage/
story?id=2785532

284
“most dangerous foreign policy blunder”
: Chuck Hagel, hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “The administration’s plan for Iraq,” Washington, D.C., January 11, 2007.

284
A survey
:
Foreign Policy
magazine and the Center for American Progress, “The Terrorism Index,” August 20, 2007.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/
2007/08/terrorism_index.html
; 61 percent: Jon Cohen and Dan Balz, “Poll: most Americans opposed to Bush’s Iraq plan,”
Washington Post
, January 11, 2007; “Chuck Hagel”: “Reid: Iraq war “worst foreign policy mistake in U.S. history,” CNN.com, February 18, 2007.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/18
/reid.iraq/index.html
.

284
“Give me everything”
: Petraeus interview with author December 18, 2009.

284
back channel
: Odierno and Keane interviews.

284
Emma Sky
: A good profile of Emma Sky is by Alissa Rubin, “A civilian voice at Odierno’s side in Iraq,”
New York Times
, November 21, 2009.

285
“the huge psychological”
: Sky interview.

285
Initiatives Group
: Emma Sky, “Iraq 2007—Moving Beyond Counter-Insurgency Doctrine—a firsthand perspective,” Royal United Services Institute, December 1, 2007; and Emma Sky interview by author in September, 29, 2009, Washington, D.C.

285
winter of 2004
: Woodward op. cit., pp. 17–26.

285
“The biggest mind-set change”
: Emma Sky, interview by author.

285
General Petraeus arrived
: Peter Baker, “General is front man for Bush’s Iraq plan,”
Washington Post
, February 7, 2007,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content
/article/2007/02/06/AR2007020601918.html

285
“I just couldn’t believe it”
: Petraeus interview with author,
October 7, 2009. Washington D.C.

285
well over two hundred car bombings
: slide from October 2009, “Patterns in high profile explosions,” published in Anthony Cordesman, “Iraq security trends,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 19, 2009.

286
more than 1,600 every week
: CENTCOM slide from October 2009, “Iraq: Weekly security Incidents.”

286
Laughing, he recalls
: David Petraeus, interview.

286
Battlefield Update Assessment
: Author observations of Petraeus in Baghdad, June 2008.

286
three-page letter
: Multi-national Force-Iraq Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guidance July 15 2008
http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil
/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/
MilitaryReview_20081031_art004.pdf
.

286
another key role
: Sky interview interview.

286
“Where everyone”
: O’Sullivan interview.

287
“Persisting indefinitely”
: Richard Lugar, June 25, 2007, Washington, D.C.
http://lugar.senate.gov/press
/record.cfm?id=277751
.

287
“charged beyond belief”
: David Petraeus, interview by author, Washington, D.C.; December 16, 2009.

287
“suspension of disbelief”
: Hillary Clinton, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, September 11, 2007.

287
banner headline
: MoveOn.org ad available from cdn.moveon.org/pac/content/pac/pdfs/PetraeusNYTad.pdf; “Army of One”: Petraeus interview.

288
“twenty-three or twenty-five-mile”
: David Petraeus, interview by author, Washington, D.C., October 7, 2009.

288
put two brigades
: Robinson op. cit., p. 104.

288
deadliest month in two years
: Ricks op. cit., p. 179.

288
For those who worked
: Sky interview; “the most difficult times”: Odierno interview.

288
“Tony Soprano does Iraq”
: Biddle interview.

289
traveled in January 2007 to Ramadi
: Odierno interview.

289
cash payments
: Colin Kahl, Michèle A. Flournoy, Shawn Brimley,
Shaping the Iraq Inheritance
, CNAS June 2008, p. 18; and Ricks op. cit., p. 215.

289
“As we were able to”
: Odierno interview.

290
half the Sunni population
: West op. cit., p. 320.

290
efforts to register
: Ernesto Londono, “U.S. takes battle against Iraq violence to border,”
Washington Post
, October 30, 2008; and author interviews with various U.S. military officers in Iraq June 2008.

290
gated communities
: Petraeus interview with author, October 7, 2009, Washington, D.C.

290
number of hours flown by unmanned aerial vehicles
: “Military replying more on drones, mostly in Iraq,” Associated Press, January 1, 2008,
http://www.msnbc
.msn.com/id/22463596/
. These numbers do not include the large numbers of hours flown by the Pentagon’s UAV workhorse the Raven.

290
signals intelligence
: author interviews with various U.S. military officers in Iraq, June 2008.

290
“two rounds a night!”
: David Gordon, interview by author, Washington, D.C., October 15, 2009.

290
IED attacks
: Thom Shanker, “Makeshift bombs spread beyond Afghanistan, Iraq,”
New York Times
, October 28, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/
world/29military.html
.

290
“So you reverse”
: Petraeus, interview with author, December 16, 2009.

291
pitched battles
: “Iraqi, U.S. forces battle al-Sadr’s militia,” CNN.com, August 6, 2004,
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/
08/05/iraq.main/index.html
.

291
sixty thousand men
: Tom Ricks and Ann Scott Tyson, “Intensified combat on streets likely,”
Washington Post
, January 11, 2007,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2007/01/10/
AR2007011002581_pf.html
.

291
Iraqi civilians
:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
.

291
sectarian violence
: Information from a series of unclassified U.S. military briefing slides from the week of May 31, 2008.

291
six-month truce
: Charles Crain, “Iraq militias fighting for supremacy,” TIME magazine, August 29, 2007.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/
0,8599,1657449,00. html
.

292
attack on the city of Basra
: “UK halts troop cuts after Iraq clashes,” CNN.com, April 1, 2008,
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/
meast/04/01/uk.iraq/index.html
.

292
70 percent
: CBS News, “UK exit leaves Basra’s future in doubt,” September 4, 2–7,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/04/
america_in_iraq/main3232921.shtml
.

292
He barely gave
: Stephen Farrell and James Glanz, “More than 1,000 in Iraq’s forces quit Basra fight,”
New York Times
, April 4, 2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/world/
middleeast/04iraq.html?scp=6&
sq=basra&st=cse
; and author’s reporting trip to Basra in June 2008.

292
“arguably impulsive”
: Petraeus interview with author October 7, 2009, Washington, D.C.

292
“There were all”
: David Gordon interview.

292
“If he succeeds”
: Hadley interview.

292
militias were decimated
: Author interviews with British and American officers in Baghdad and Basra, Iraq, June 2008.

292
Maliki followed up
: Sudarsan Raghavan, “19 tense hours in Sadr City alongside the Mahdi Army,”
Washington Post
, March 29, 2008,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/article/
2008/03/28/AR2008032803810_pf.html

292
Sunni sheikhs
: The four sheikhs were Hamid al-Haiys, Jassim Suwaydawi, Abd al-Jabbar and Ali Hatem, interviewed by author in Anbar, Iraq, May 31, 2008.

293
some six hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers and policemen
: Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann, “Obama’s War,”
Washington Post
, February 15, 2009.

293
fired eighteen
: Stephen Biddle, Michael E. O’Hanlon, and Kenneth M. Pollack, “How to leave a stable Iraq,”
Foreign Affairs
, September/October 2008,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/63565
; and author interview with Major General Hussein al-Awadi, June 2008, Baghdad, Iraq.

293
a mixed force
: Stephen Biddle, Michael O’Hanlon, and Kenneth Pollack, “How to leave a stable Iraq,”
Foreign Affairs
, September/October 2008.

293
provincial election law
: Sudarsan Raghavan, “Parliament approves elections law in Iraq,”
Washington Post
, September 25, 2008,
http://www.washingtonpostcom/wp-dyn/content/
article/2008/09/24/AR2008092400752.html
;.
“went largely peacefully”: New York Times, “Iraq Elections,”
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/
international/countriesandterritories/
iraq/elections/index.html
.