The 9/11 Wars (107 page)

  
45
.
Quoted in Fallows, ‘Blind into Baghdad’.

  
46
.
George Packer, ‘Dreaming of democracy’,
New York Times
, March 2, 2003.

  
47
.
The campaign was expected to take 100 days, according to Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Viggers. ‘West put “amateurs” in charge of Iraq occupation, inquiry told’, Staff and agencies,
guardian.co.uk
, December 9, 2009.

  
48
.
Ricks,
Fiasco
, p. 118. Gregory Fontenot, E. J. Degen and David Tohn,
On Point: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom
, Combat Studies Institute Press, 2004.

  
49
.
See David Zuccino,
Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad
, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004. Some accounts state that one of the operations killed at least 2,000 Iraqi soldiers. This seems unlikely. However, many residents of areas along the route of the two operations described numerous civilian deaths to the author, often simply caused by ricochets or in the crossfire.

  
50
.
See
Iraqbodycount.org
. Carl Conetta, ‘The Wages of War: Iraqi Combatant and Noncombatant Fatalities in the 2003 Conflict’, Project on Defense Alternatives Research Monograph 8, October 20, 2003.

  
51
.
Kosovo in 1999 may arguably have preceded Iraq in this but in very different circumstances and in a much less dramatic fashion.

  
52
.
Again as in Afghanistan, these mechanisms were often less ‘traditional’ than they seemed to Western observers. The Iraqi tribal system was very different from the days when Iraq was a predominantly rural society in the immediate post-war decades or a prosperous oil-rich emerging Arab state in the 1970s. Equally, there was little that was traditional about the rhetoric of the movement led by the young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which, within days of the fall of the regime, was organizing political meetings, taking over mosques and distributing food and other necessities in the vast Shia slum areas to the north of Baghdad.

  
53
.
For a useful account of this episode see Patrick Cockburn,
Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the Struggle for Iraq
, Simon and Schuster, 2008, pp. 122–4.

  
54
.
Polls in the aftermath of the invasion showed George Bush’s domestic approval level at over 90 per cent. On May 1, the president had landed in a navy combat jet on the aircraft carrier the US
Abraham Lincoln
off the coast of California under a banner, the work of the ship’s crew, bearing the legend ‘mission accomplished’. He acknowledged difficult work ahead. ‘The battle in Iraq is one victory in the war on terror that began on September 11th, 2001,’ he said.

  
55
.
Adopted by a vote of fourteen to zero on May 22, 2003. The measure also had the advantage of freeing up Iraq’s frozen oil revenues from the Oil for Food deal. ‘In August I thought that it could still get better,’ remembered Andy Bearpark, the CPA’s British director of operations and deputy later. Author interview, Bath, July 2004.

  
56
.
Bing West,
The Strongest Tribe
, Random House, 2005, p. 6.

  
57
.
Author interview with Andy Bearpark, CPA director of operations, Bath, July 2004.

  
58
.
Bremer later insisted that British officials had been fully briefed before his order was issued. Statement by Ambassador Bremer to Chilcot commission, May 18, 2010,
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/background/statement-bremer.aspx
.

  
59
.
Bush admits as much in his memoirs. The ‘psychological impact’ of disbanding the army had been underestimated and the de-Baathification went much further than was intended, he writes.
Decision Points
, p. 259.

  
60
.
See Toby Dodge, ‘The Ideological Roots of Failure: The Application of Kinetic Neo-Liberalism to Iraq’,
International Affairs
, vol. 86, no. 6 (November 2010), pp. 1,269–86. Paul Bremer,
My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope
, Simon and Schuster, 2006, p. 39.

  
61
.
Author interview with John Wilkes, deputy British ambassador, Baghdad, June 2003.

  
62
.
The influence of the post-war measures in Germany on Bremer in particular is evident from his account of his time in Baghdad,
My Year in Iraq
. In fact de-Nazification had been far less severe than de-Baathification was to be.

  
63
.
Patrick Cockburn,
The Occupation, War and Resistance in Iraq
, Verso, 2006, p. 71. Ricks,
Fiasco
, pp. 162–3.

  
64
.
Rajiv Chandreshekan,
Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Inside Iraq’s Green Zone
, Knopf, 2006, pp. 79–80.

  
65
.
Quoted in ibid., p. 159

  
66
.
At least two years according to Congressional Research Service (Kenneth Katzman),
Report for Congress: Iraq: Elections, Government, and Constitution
, November 20, 2006.

  
67
.
‘Rumsfeld rejects “cleric-led” rule’, BBC News Online, April 25, 2005.

  
68
.
Author interview with Charles Heatley, Baghdad, June 2003.

  
69
.
Author interview, Najaf, June 2003.

  
70
.
Author interview, Baghdad, March 2003. See also the useful
Meeting the Resistance: A Film by Molly Bingham and Steve Connors
, 2007.

  
71
.
Author interviews, Baghdad, May and June 2003.

  
72
.
‘Poll shows Iraqis wary about Western-style democracy’, VOA News, December 11, 2003.

  
73
.
United Nations Report of the Security in Iraq Accountability Panel (SIAP)
, New York, March 3, 2004, p. 30.

  
74
.
See Jason Burke, ‘Left to die’,
GQ
, August 2004. Multiple author interviews with relatives of the casualties and soldiers involved, UK, February, March 2004.

  
75
.
British spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ronnie McCourt denied any troops had ‘molested’, i.e. searched, women. ‘We are the British army. We just don’t do that,’ he said. Author interviews, Abu Ala and Basra, June 25 and 26, 2003.

  
76
.
The author was shown the agreement in Majjar al-Kabir on June 25, 2003, the day after the deaths of the Redcaps.

  
77
.
Draft MoD report, ‘On the events in Majjar al-Kabir, June 23 2003’, March 2004, author collection.

  
78
.
Author telephone interview with Katie, Hamilton-Jewell’s girlfriend, March 2004.

  
79
.
See, for example, David Blair, ‘The Last Stand at Majjar al-Kabir’,
Daily Telegraph
, June 26, 2003.

  
80
.
Excerpts from Ministry of Defence, Special Investigation Branch, draft report, obtained April, 2004. The investigation found that only two rounds out of one magazine for at least one of the Redcaps’ personal weapons had been fired.

  
81
.
Author interview with Abbas Bairphy, Majjar al-Kabir, June 2003.

  
82
.
Ibid.

  
83
.
Ibid.

  
84
.
See ‘The Lord of the Marshes Takes a Mediating Role in Iraq’,
Terrorism Focus
, vol. 3, no. 33, August 23, 2006. Rory Stewart,
Occupational Hazards
, Picador, 2007, is an excellent and colourful account with much useful detail on Abu Hatem and Maysan province more generally.

  
85
.
Author interview with Abu Ala villagers, June 2003.

  
86
.
Author interview, Whitehall, London, August 2003.

  
87
.
See
Guardian
correspondent Rory McCarthy’s account of his time in Iraq from 2003 to 2005,
No One Told Us We Are Defeated
, Guardian Books, 2006.

  
88
.
Author interview, Baghdad, August 2004.

  
89
.
In their first debriefing reports of the battle, the British patrol in Majjar al-Kabir estimated they might have killed up to 200 people and feared the incident might provoke a general insurrection across the region. In fact the local hospital registered five killed and nineteen wounded, who included several women and children and a fifty-year-old ambulance driver hit in the crossfire. Many locals involved, however, are likely to have been treated – or buried – by relatives so the true number is almost certainly much higher. Author interview with Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal, present in Amarah, March 2004, London. Author interviews, Majjar al-Kabir hospital, June 2003.

  
90
.
Copy given to the author by Tony Hamilton-Jewell, Simon Hamilton-Jewell’s brother, March 2004.

CHAPTER 6: WAR IN IRAQ II: LOSING IT

    
1
.
The tattoo detail is from Bush,
Decision Points
, p. 267.

    
2
.
In part, this omission had been forced on the Americans by the refusal of the Turks to allow 15,000 troops across their territory.

    
3
.
The best two biographies of Saddam are Alexander and Patrick Cockburn,
Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein
, Harper Perennial, 2000, and Said Aburish,
Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge
, Bloomsbury, 2000.

    
4
.
Scott Peterson, ‘How Wahhabis fan Iraq insurgency’,
Christian Science Monitor
, September 17, 2003.

    
5
.
Jason Burke, ‘In a land without law or leaders, militant Islam threatens to rule’,
Observer
, April 27, 2003.

    
6
.
Author interview with senior Iraqi intelligence investigators, Baghdad, May 2004.