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  • Brookings: Winning the Right War
    By Philip H. Gordon
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  • Profile: Al-Qaeda in Iraq (a.k.a. al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia)
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  • Estimated Costs of U.S. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and of Other Activities Related to the War on Terrorism, October 2007
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  See Also

  Iraq, Terrorism, Terrorism and the Law

  '

  • Iraq: The Problem with Creating a New Police Force
    
  • The Pentagon's Three-Star Wise Man: Gen. Bill Odom
    
  • Minorities, Women Highly Satisfied by Military Work
    
  • The Booze Is Back in Baghdad
    
  • ‘He Should Never Have Gone to Iraq’
    

  More From:

  Newsweek International

  MSNBC: From Ally to Adversary?

  Author:	Richard Engel

  October 10, 2007

  Summary:

  This article tells the story of Sultan Hashim, Saddam's final defense minister who worked for the CIA to overthrow the dictator, was convicted as a war criminal, and was sentenced to death. His execution however, has come to a deadlock.

  Excerpt:

  To survive under Saddam Hussein, you had to feign loyalty and turn on your friends. To survive after Saddam, you had to cooperate with Saddam's enemies. It's a reality that has left so many in Iraq with checkered pasts.

  Some former spies have done well and reinvented themselves. Others have been forgotten and disavowed. 

  Saddam's final defense minister Sultan Hashim says he is one of the betrayed.

  I met Hashim in Baghdad during the 2003 invasion. He was gruff, portly, and abrupt and ended up looking somewhat foolish.  I was in the Palestine Hotel, holed up with a few journalists still in Baghdad, taking shelter from the rain of bombs and rockets. Hashim had come to give a statement to the tiny Baghdad press corps.

  He sat at a table set up on a little stage in the Palestine's main conference room. A giant map of Iraq was pinned to the wall behind him. Hashim’s main message was that American troops were bogged down in southern Iraq and were not advancing toward Baghdad as quickly as American commanders claimed. Hashim wasn't fooling anyone. As he spoke, the map behind him shook like paper in the wind as American JDAMs (joint direct attack munitions) and cruise missiles exploded outside. Nope, no Americans here. It was almost funny.

  But it turns out Hashim wasn't working only for Saddam.  He'd also volunteered to work for the CIA to overthrow the dictator. 

  Full Text of Document

   

• 

  New CFR Books

  

  In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.

  

  America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.

  

  In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.

  Complete list of CFR Books.

  

  

  New Independent Task Force Reports

  Confronting Climate Change

  This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.

  U.S.-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality

  This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.

  About Independent Task Forces at the Council.

  

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