My Share of the Task (76 page)

more than sixty suicide bombings:
Burns, “Iraq's Ho Chi Minh Trail.”

mangers for their sheep:
James Janega, “Too Much Border, Not Enough Patrol,”
Chicago Tribune
, April 19, 2005.

“featureless, a muddy brown”:
Viscount William Slim, quoted in
The War: 1939–1945
, ed. Desmond Flower and James Reeves (Cassell, 1960), 198.

South Carolina–size:
Al-Anbar Awakening, vol. I
, 10.

attempted to breach the gate:
Steve Fainaru, “The Grim Reaper, Riding a Firetruck in Iraq,”
Washington Post
,
April 19, 2005.

Marine lance corporal:
An account of the young Marine's actions can be found in Elliot Blair Smith, “Pa. Native Thwarts Car-Bomb Attack,”
USA Today
, April 17, 2005.

flown to Germany:
Dates and information on soldiers Jerak, Diesing, Shea, and Kolath can be found on the U.S. Army Special Operations Command “Memorial Wall” website.

“A lot of emotion attached”:
E-mail to Annie, August 28, 2005, 9:22
A.M
.

“Governments saw men”:
T. E. Lawrence,
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
, 199.

proportion of the car bombings:
Craig S. Smith, “U.S. Contends Campaign Has Cut Suicide Attacks,”
New York Times
, August 5, 2005.

10 incidents killed 97 people:
These figures were calculated using data from the NCTC's Worldwide Incidents Tracking System database.

had fought with the insurgency:
Kirk Semple, “U.S. Forces Rely on Local Informants in Ferreting Rebels in West Iraq,”
New York Times
,
December 10, 2005.

AQI and another tribe:
Ibid.

female
body parts commingling:
“Al-Qa'eda in Iraq Alienated by Cucumber Laws and Brutality,”
Telegraph
,
August 11, 2008.

executed nine members:
Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer, “Insurgents Assert Control over Town Near Syrian Border,”
Washington Post
, September 6, 2006.

“Islamic Republic of Al Qaim”:
Ibid.

“I've been able to do”:
E-mail to Annie August 28, 2005, 6:54
P.M.
(edited for punctuation).

CHAPTER 12: THE HUNT

head of the conference table:
Details of this meeting and the dialogue are based upon my recollection but aided and confirmed by interviews with two individuals present at the meeting.

excluded these Iraq officials:
Interviews with two senior members of National Security Council staff.

“being done to get him”:
A memorandum with the subject “Meeting with POTUS” was sent from Donald Rumsfeld to General Dick Myers and Steve Cambone on May 19, 2005. It is available from the Rumsfeld Papers website.

self-stated main effort:
In audio tapes, bin Laden “characterized the insurgency in Iraq as the central battle in a ‘Third World War, which the Crusader-Zionist coalition began against the Islamic nation.'” Christopher M. Blanchard, “Al Qaeda: Statements and Evolving Ideology,”
Congressional Research Service
, February 4, 2005, 5.

brothers and seven sisters:
The most definitive list of Zarqawi's nine siblings and their ages can be found in Brisard,
Zarqawi,
10, note 13. However, it is worth noting that, like many aspects of Zarqawi's early biography, contradictory information exists. For example, one otherwise very accurate
Los Angeles Times
article claims Zarqawi was the “second of five children.” Megan K. Stack, “Zarqawi Took Familiar Route into Terrorism,”
Los Angeles Times
,
July 2, 2004.

cemetery near his apartment:
Fouad Hussein, “Al Zarqawi . . . The Second Generation of Al-Qai'da, Part 1,” Al-Quds-al' Arabi, trans. by the Federal Broadcast Information Service.

dropped out at age seventeen:
Stack, “Zarqawi Took Familiar Route.”

sweeping Zarqa's brown streets:
Eli Lake, “Base Jump,”
New Republic
, November 28 and December 5, 2005, 19.

reputation for his
temper:
Jeffrey Gettleman, “Zarqawi's Journey: From Dropout to Prisoner to an Insurgent Leader in Iraq,”
New York Times
,
July 13,
2004.

tattoos
gave his skin:
Stack, “Zarqawi Took Familiar Route.”

case of attempted rape:
Brisard, having reviewed Jordanian records on the matter, is most reliable on this event (Brisard,
Zarqawi
,
13–14).

knife in a fight:
Ibid.,
13.

strict Salafist bent:
Zarqawi's mother “enrolled him . . . at a mosque in Amman known for its Salafist stance.” Hala Jaber, “A Twisted Love,”
Sunday Times
, July 31, 2005.

worked as a correspondent:
Stack, “Zarqawi Took Familiar Route.”

their heroic exploits:
Gettleman, “Zarqawi's Journey.”

for use against
Israel:
Brisard,
Zarqawi
,
37.

1994:
Zarqawi was arrested and sent to Suwaqah in 1994, but his trial did not finish with sentencing until November 1996 (ibid., 43).

spent in Jordanian prisons:
He was eventually moved to Al-Salt and then Jafar prisons (ibid
.,
49).

using hydrochloric acid:
Ibid., 50.

keep people in line:
“He would attack us with his fists,” attested fellow prisoner Yousef Rababa, quoted in Gettleman, “Zarqawi's Journey.”

homemade weights:
“Cellmates remember his barbells, made from pieces of bed frame and olive oil tins filled with rocks” (ibid.). This fact is also cited in Brisard,
Zarqawi
, 49.

respect of his followers:
Brisard,
Zarqawi
,
48–49.

“just by moving his eyes”:
Gettleman, “Zarqawi's Journey.”

Released in March 1999:
Brisard,
Zarqawi
,
58–59.

Jordanian
wife in tow:
Alissa J. Rubin, “Jordanian's Mother Denies He Has Ties to Terrorism,”
Los Angeles Times
,
February 8, 2003.

in Herat in 2000:
Herat, near Iran, might also have produced or deepened Zarqawi's bile toward Shiites; Saif al-Adl, quoted in Fouad Hussein's biography of Zarqawi, indicates that the Shiites in Herat worked with the “opposition” to rout the jihadists once the American invasion began. Hussein, “Al Zarqawi, part 8.”

married a second wife:
“Al-Jazeera TV Investigates Iraqi Militant Al-Zarqawi's Al-Qa'idah Links,”
BBC Monitoring International Reports
, July 2, 2004.

informal relationship with bin Laden:
Reportedly, Al Qaeda's insistence on making war with the United States was a barrier to Zarqawi's pledging his full allegiance to bin Laden when invited to do so in 2000. It is also possible that bin Laden's forbidding Zarqawi from teaching Maqdisi's texts was a nonstarter. Vahid Brown,
Cracks in the Foundation: Leadership Schisms in al-Qa'ida 1989–2006
(Combating Terrorism Center, January 2, 2007),
19–20.

a set of broken ribs:
Saif al-Adl in Hussein, “Al Zarqawi,
part 8.”

was on Zarqawi's mind:
Ibid.

line to Zarqawi himself:
Interviews with task force members implied that by being an Iraq-wide player in the insurgency, Abu Zar was more likely linked to AQI senior leadership.

shrine on the other side:
Robert F. Worth, “950 Die in Stampede on Baghdad Bridge,”
New York Times
, September 1, 2005.

Some drowned:
Dan Murphy, “Panic of Terror Sparks Human Tragedy in Iraq,”
Christian Science Monitor
(reprinted in
USA Today
), September 1, 2005.

that many were injured:
Casualty figures are from “Iraqis Bury Victims of Baghdad Stampede,”
New York Times
,
September 1, 2005.

of sectarian paranoia:
A rumor spread that the pilgrims had been poisoned. As Robert Worth noted, “Shiite Muslims believe that Imam Kadhim was poisoned by agents of Harun al-Rashid, the Sunni caliph, in the late eighth century, and history often merges with the present among religious pilgrims here” (Worth, “950 Die in Stampede”).

tragically entrenched:
And yet even against Zarqawi's encroaching dark dream for Iraq, a few defiant heroes stood out: A young Sunni man, nineteen years old, heard calls from a local mosque to help people drowning in the nearby Tigris, ran to the river, and ferried out Shia victims until he had exhausted himself, drowning in the water. “Sunni Rescuer Hailed as a Hero,” BBC,
September 5, 2005.

released from prison in Jordan:
About a year before his release, from within the walls of Qefqefa prison, Maqdisi had posted an open letter to his website addressed to Zarqawi and criticizing his tactics in Iraq, but it went largely unnoticed. Nibras Kazimi, “A Virulent Ideology in Mutation: Zarqawi Upstages Maqdisi,”
Current Trends in Islamist Ideology
, September 12, 2005.

its most influential
ideologue:
Joas Wagemakers, an expert on Maqdisi, writes that “Maqdisi is one of the most prominent radical Islamic ideologues in the world today” but notes that the description of him as “‘the spiritual father of the al-Qa'ida movement' . . . may be an exaggeration.” Joas Wagemakers, “Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi,”
CTC Sentinel
,
May 15, 2008. Maqdisi famously referred to the West Point Combating Terrorism Center's
Militant Ideology Atlas
, to argue that he was “the most influential living Islamic thinker . . . among jihadi groups.” Thomas Hegghammer, “Maqdisi Invokes McCants,”
Jihadica
(blog),
April 18, 2009.

made Iraq a “crematory”:
This translation is from Steven Brooke, “The Preacher and the Jihadi,”
Current Trends in Islamist Ideology
, February 16, 2006.

wiped out like another race:
Kazimi, “A Virulent Ideology.”

“Six months ago, every day”:
Y. Yehoshua, “Dispute in Islamist Circles, Over the Legitimacy of Attacking Muslims, Shi'ites, and Non-combatant Muslims in Jihad Operations in Iraq,” Middle East Media Research Institute, September 11, 2005. This was strong stuff coming from Maqdisi, whose excommunication of the Saudi royal family in the early 1990s had been too radical for bin Laden and whose own website was stocked with anti-Shia literature (Kazimi, “A Virulent Ideology”).

“liquidate” the Sunnis:
Zarqawi responded in an audiotape posted online, later in the day after Maqdisi's Al Jazeera interview aired (Yehoshua, “Dispute in Islamist Circles”). On July 6, the next day, Maqdisi was put back in prison, leaving behind an Internet statement praising Zarqawi as a “beloved brother and hero” and acknowledging that the “mujahadeen brothers in Iraq have their own interpretations and choices that they choose as they see fit in the battlefield that we are distant from” (ibid.).

days later on July 9:
“Letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi,” Office of the Director of National Intelligence website, October 11, 2005.

fulsome if perfunctory praise:
“I want to be the first to congratulate you,” he begins, “for what God has blessed you with in terms of fighting battle in the heart of the Islamic world, which was formerly the field for major battles in Islam's history, and what is now the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era” (ibid.).

“the strongest weapon”:
Ibid.

“Expel the Americans from Iraq”:
Anti-Shiism had been ingrained in the fundamentalism of Al Qaeda, but Al Qaeda had occasionally flirted with cooperating with Shias to strike its far enemies. During the Soviet war, Shiites had fought alongside the Sunni groups and even found quarter in bin Laden's camp. Zawahiri's Egyptian al-Jihad had supported the Iranian revolution, and he reportedly took two million dollars of funds from Iran. But by the late 1990s, Al Qaeda was teaching the thousands of men who passed through its training camps in Afghanistan that the “enemies of Islam” were first, apostate Arab leaders; second, Shiites; third, America; and fourth, Israel. Wright,
Looming Tower
, 340–42.

website on September 14:
Zarqawi released another tape on September 19, 2005, clarifying some of his September 14 tape, including that his group would not target Sadrists “as long as they do not strike us,” because Sadr's followers weren't collaborating with the Iraqi government. Anthony H. Cordesman with Emma R. Davies,
Iraq's Insurgency and the Road to Civil Conflict
(Praeger Security International, 2008), 155.