Exceptional (14 page)

The facility at Guantánamo was and remains safe, secure, humane, and necessary. Nevertheless, there have been years of attempts to close it, though doing so requires releasing the detainees. In efforts led by the State Department, some detainees were released during the George W. Bush administration. President Obama has accelerated releases, even though by the time he took office, the detainees left in Guantánamo were the worst of the worst, men whose own home countries often refused to take them back. There are now years of evidence that many of the detainees who have been released are returning to the field of battle. According to the annual report issued by
the director of national intelligence in 2014, nearly one-third of those released are
back in the fight.

Today, for example, the lead recruiter for ISIS in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan is former Guantánamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost. Two days after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself caliph of the Islamic State in June 2014, Dost pledged his allegiance. He now spends his days recruiting jihadists to send
to Syria and Iraq to fight for ISIS.

Dost is a particularly useful reminder of the propaganda about Guantánamo and detainees that has appeared in the leftist European press. In an article in the
Guardian
newspaper in April 2006, Dost was described as “a softly spoken Afghan” whose only desire was that the U.S. military return to him the poetry he had written while at Guantánamo. “Those words are very precious to me,” the “Poet of Guantánamo”
wrote the
Guardian
reporter.

IN 2002 THE UNITED States captured Abu Zubaydah, a senior
al Qaeda operations expert, in Pakistan. After his capture, he initially provided some information and then stopped cooperating. The CIA was confident he knew more, and ordinary interrogation methods, such as those described in the Army Field Manual, had proven ineffective.

Drawing on techniques used to train our own people in the Survival, Evade, Resistance, and Escape, or SERE, program, the CIA developed a series of techniques they proposed to use on Abu Zubaydah. They sought the approval of the president, the National Security Council, and the Justice Department before proceeding. They wanted to ensure that none of the techniques was in violation of the law or any of the treaty obligations of the United States. The Justice Department provided legal opinions outlining the limits of lawful interrogation and detailing the techniques that could be used.
Other safeguards were put in place, such as requiring the approval of the director of the CIA before any detainee could be questioned using these methods. The National Security Council approved the program.

And it worked. After being subjected to the techniques, Abu Zubaydah provided information that led to Ramzi bin al-Shibh. He was captured on September 11, 2002, as he was plotting a terrorist attack on London using commercial airplanes. Information from bin al-Shibh and Abu Zubaydah led us to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11.

In 2014, six former directors and deputy directors of the CIA wrote that, despite claims to the contrary made by the program's opponents, the program was “invaluable in three critical ways”:

• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.

• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass-casualty attacks, saving American and allied lives.

• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on
how best to attack.

A 2004 CIA report provided specific details about the extensive information we obtained from one of the detainees, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, after he was waterboarded. Titled “Khaled Sheikh Mohamed: Pre-Eminent Source on al Qaeda,” the report stated:

Debriefings since his detention have yielded . . . reports that have shed light on the plots, capabilities, the identity and location of al-Qaeda operatives and affiliated terrorist organizations and networks. He has provided information on al Qaeda's strategic
doctrine, probable targets, the impact of striking each target set, and likely methods of attacks
inside the United States.

We now also know it was information from this program that led us directly to Osama bin Laden. According to Leon Panetta, director of the CIA and secretary of defense under President Obama:

The real story was that in order to put the puzzle of intelligence together that led us to bin Laden, there were a lot of pieces out there that were a part of that puzzle. Yes, some of it came from some of the
tactics that were used at that time . . . interrogation tactics that were used.

As we pieced together intelligence about al Qaeda in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the enhanced interrogation program was one of the most effective tools we had. It saved lives and prevented attacks.

LEAVING SADDAM HUSSEIN IN power in Iraq after 9/11, in light of the threat he posed, would have been, as former British prime minister Tony Blair has noted, an act of political cowardice. This is not to say that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. It is to observe that in the aftermath of 9/11, when thousands of Americans had been slaughtered by terrorists armed with airline tickets and box cutters, we had an obligation to do everything possible to prevent terrorists from gaining access to much worse weapons. Saddam's Iraq was the most likely place for terrorists to gain access to and knowledge of such weapons.

On October 10, 2002, the House of Representatives passed the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq by a vote of 296–113, forty-six more votes in favor than had been the case for Operation
Desert Storm in 1991. Shortly after midnight the Senate approved the resolution 77–23, a much larger margin than for the Gulf War.

The United Nations Security Council, on November 8, 2002, unanimously approved Security Council resolution 1441. It gave Iraq a final opportunity to disarm, demanded immediate and unrestricted access for UN inspectors, and required that Iraq provide a “complete declaration of all aspects” of its weapons of mass destruction programs and delivery systems. Iraq failed to comply. On March 17, 2003, President Bush addressed the nation and gave Saddam Hussein forty-eight hours to leave Iraq. Two days later President Bush gave the order launching Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Our forces performed magnificently, and within weeks Saddam Hussein had fallen and we had taken Baghdad. As U.S. troops swept through Iraqi cities, they were, in fact, greeted as liberators. The headline in the
Washington Post
on April 9, for example, reported, “U.S. Forces Move Triumphantly Through Capital Streets, Cheered by Crowds Jubilant at End of Repressive Regime.” Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya visited the White House that night. Makiya's books
Republic of Fear
and
Cruelty and Silence
documented the atrocities Saddam had committed for years against his own people. Coming at the end of the day that Saddam's regime had been toppled, it was an emotional meeting. “Thank you,” Makiya said, “for our liberation.”

As we now know, Saddam did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. However, it requires a willing suspension of disbelief and a desire to put politics above safety to assert that the absence of stockpiles meant the absence of a threat to the United States. David Kay, who led the international Iraq Survey Group, tasked with finding Saddam's stockpiles, said, “I actually think that what we learned during the inspections made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than in fact we had thought
before the war.” Kay and his successor Charles Duelfer made clear that Saddam retained the
intent, knowledge, and dual-purpose infrastructure to restart WMD programs once the international sanctions regime collapsed. Citing Iraqi diplomat Tariq Aziz, Duelfer wrote that Saddam would likely have restarted his nuclear program first. He had purposely kept at hand the men and women with the skill and knowledge
to do so.

Between 2003 and 2006, coalition forces in Iraq, led by the United States, accomplished a great deal. They deposed a horrific dictator with ties to terrorists and plans to reconstitute his WMD program. They provided security for the Iraqi people as they went to the polls in the first truly democratic elections in their history. They liberated the country and handed responsibility for the government back to the Iraqis.

But al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was determined to sow destruction. We know from correspondence captured by American troops that Zarqawi was intent on fomenting a sectarian war inside Iraq. For more than two years, despite horrific attacks by Sunni terrorists, the Shi'a largely resisted being drawn in, but on February 6, 2006, Zarqawi's terrorists blew up one of the holiest Shi'ite sites—the Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra. Shi'a militias, in many instances backed by Iran, took up the task of killing Sunnis.

As the violence increased, there were some who argued we should walk away and “leave Iraq to the Iraqis.” But America's security depended then, as it does now, on ensuring that Iraq does not become a safe haven for terrorists. President Bush rightly decided we could not abandon Iraq.

On January 10, 2007, the president announced that he was committing five additional brigades—more than twenty thousand additional troops—to the war in Iraq. The additional troops, he said, would be accompanied by a new strategy, a counterinsurgency effort to provide security for local populations, particularly in Baghdad. He faced significant opposition from Republicans and Democrats, including
Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Secretary Clinton later admitted, according to former secretary of defense Robert Gates, that her opposition to the surge in troops was political since she was, at that time, competing against Senator Obama in the
Iowa caucuses.

President Bush did the right and courageous thing. The surge and the adoption of a new counterinsurgency strategy worked. With the additional troops and the new strategy, we were able to provide security for the Iraqis and demonstrate that we were not going to abandon them. A Sunni force, the Sons of Iraq, rose up to fight the insurgency and al Qaeda with us. Together, we largely defeated al Qaeda and the Shi'ite militia groups and enabled the Iraqis to begin to build a new country.

HISTORY WILL BE THE ultimate judge of our decision to liberate Iraq. It will be debated long after we are gone, and it is important for future decision makers that those debates
be based on fact.

Those who say the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a mistake are essentially saying we would be better off if Saddam Hussein were still in power. That's a difficult position to sustain. Saddam had deep, long-standing, far-reaching relationships with terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda and its affiliates. These relationships have been repeatedly confirmed in documents captured after the war. Saddam's Iraq was a state based on terror, overseeing a coordinated program to support global jihadist terrorist organizations. Ansar al Islam, an al Qaeda–linked organization, operated training camps in northern Iraq before the invasion. Zarqawi, the future leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, funneled weapons and fighters into these camps, before the invasion, from his location in Baghdad. We also know, again confirmed in documents captured after the war, that Saddam provided funding, training, and other support to numerous terrorist organizations and
individuals over decades, including to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man who leads al Qaeda today.

We also know that Saddam Hussein had the technology, equipment, facilities, and scientists in place to construct the world's worst weapons. We know he intended to reconstitute these programs as soon as the international sanctions regime collapsed. He had an advanced nuclear program in place prior to Operation Desert Storm. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that had his efforts not been derailed by Desert Storm, he could have had a nuclear device by 1992.

In 1998, Saddam kicked the international weapons inspectors out of Iraq. He violated every one of the seventeen UN Security Council resolutions passed against him.

Critics of the liberation of Iraq would do well to read about his 1988 chemical weapons attack on Halabja, particularly the accounts telling of the babies and children who died slow, painful deaths in bomb shelters where they had sought refuge with their families. The shelters became, as Saddam knew they would,
gas chambers. The lesson of Halabja and perhaps two hundred other villages and towns that Saddam attacked with chemical weapons is that Saddam had no compunction, no moral compass, no hesitation to
use
the world's worst weapons, even against his own people.

Saddam's was a reign of terror characterized by torture, rape rooms, the murder of parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents, and the oppression of the Kurds, Marsh Arabs, and Shi'ites. George W. Bush captured it well when he wrote that Saddam was “a
homicidal dictator pursuing WMD and supporting terror at the heart of the Middle East.”

Against the weight of historical evidence, some critics claim that the Bush administration manufactured or exaggerated the intelligence
about Saddam's weapons programs. The charge doesn't stand up against the facts. Both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Robb-Silberman Commission issued bipartisan reports concluding there was no politicization of the intelligence or pressure on analysts to change their judgments about Iraq's WMD. In fact, intelligence assessments about Saddam's weapons programs stretched back at least a decade:

• A 1993 National Intelligence Estimate found that international support for sanctions was eroding but judged that even if they remained in place, Saddam Hussein would “continue reconstituting Iraq's conventional military forces” and “will take steps to
re-establish Iraq's WMD programs.”

• A 1994 Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee report assessed that “the Iraqi government is determined to covertly reconstitute
its nuclear weapons program.”