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By Root 4006 0

or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare against the new government or Coalition forces.” This point was not included in the executive summary at the front of the document. Though press reports and opportunistic politicians seized on this line years later, CIA Director Tenet, to his considerable credit, came forward and put it into proper perspective in his memoirs: “It’s tempting to cite this information and say, ‘See, we predicted many of the difficulties that later ensued’—but doing so would be disingenuous…. Had we felt strongly that these were likely outcomes, we should have shouted our conclusions.”49

* According to the official Defense Department dictionary, guerrilla warfare was defined as “military and paramilitary operations conducted in enemy-held or hostile territory by irregular, predominantly indigenous forces.” An insurgency was defined as “an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict.”53

* We learned that several Al-Jazeera correspondents were embedded with the terrorists. They knew when and where attacks against Iraqi and coalition forces would take place, and they videotaped the attacks showing our troops being killed.

* The often cited statistics about electricity generation did not give a full picture. After insurgent attacks on the power grid began taking a toll on production, Iraqis began to figure out the best solution for themselves. They bought generators for their homes and businesses that were far less susceptible to attacks than the large, vulnerable, and expensive power plants, lines, and transformers that made up the national grid.

* Two of the most promising leads were from two Sunni former army generals, Abdul Razaq Sultan al-Jibouri and Talalal-Gaood, who had reached out to the U.S. military in late 2003 and offered to help negotiate peace with Sunni tribes in Anbar province.

* DoD’s willingness to remove Ahmad Chalabi from a governance role in de-Baathification if he continued to be too stringent seemed not to register with those critics who argued that DoD officials were somehow fixated on making Chalabi the leader of Iraq.

* I wanted to make sure the details of a move to arrest Sadr had been properly considered before action was taken. With this in mind, at one point in 2003, I dictated a series of questions for Bremer and CPA security officials to consider before they moved against him. Bremer writes in his book that these “exasperating” questions were tantamount to my opposition to the plan. Asking questions about the operation and how it would be done was basic prudence. It was a mistake not to have asked similar “exasperating” questions about some of Bremer’s other decisions.35

* Not all of the photos were released to avoid inflaming the situation on the ground in Iraq and other places where American servicemen and-women were at risk.

* Another problem was that those at CENTCOM and the Army who had been in positions of responsibility and partly responsible for the circumstances that preceded the abuses at Abu Ghraib had already left their positions. By the spring of 2004, most of those still in the relevant posts had been in there for relatively short periods of time. On the operational side, General Abizaid had been on the job for only several months when the abuse occurred. Under him, General Sanchez was the officer directly overseeing operations in Iraq and, therefore, the officer most likely to be fired. But in my view the Army administrative chain had thrust Sanchez into a position he never should have been in, and proceeded to deny Sanchez the staff and support he required and requested and that I had authorized. The Army’s leadership had also been in flux. I had already fired Secretary of the Army Tom White in April 2003 for other reasons. Les Brownlee was an acting secretary when Abu Ghraib occurred. The Army chief of staff, General Shinseki, who had been in charge when the original deficiencies in training, selection of senior personnel, and establishing Sanchez