Duncan Hunter 6/22/10 Part 1: Iraq Reality vs. The Wash. Post & Gen. McChrystal Vs. Obama

This interview is part of an ongoing 2010 series of conversations with former Congressman, conservative icon and friend of Free Republic, Duncan Lee Hunter. The intent is to keep this rock ribber's ideas in the public square which will hopefully influence the direction of the Republican Party, as well as inspire the American people to embrace his Reaganesque views on life and politics. With any luck, Hunter will seek the presidency again in 2012, but for now he is concentrating on helping the GOP wrestle control of the Congress from the radical Pelosi brigades.

AJM: Well, just watching the world go by with more bemusement and amazement every day.

AJM: It’s going pretty good. I’ve got a couple more irons in the fire to hammer out today and I’ll consider it as earning my paycheck. How have you been? Busy?

DH: No. I was off and running to appointments today at 6:00 in the morning. I’ve almost got enough time to re-copy my address book. I haven’t been able to do it the last three weeks. I need another 30 minutes, which I haven’t had, to do it. I’ll get it done sometime this week, I hope.

AJM: Speaking of your address book, in email; now I remember what I sent you a couple weeks ago, it was that CATO stuff on Reagan. Did you find that?

DH: Yeah. I went over my emails and didn’t see any of that. But anyway, what is it when you say the CATO stuff on Reagan?

AJM: We had a conversation a few weeks back about ‘Free Trade’. And I brought up the fact that I had read a piece where the CATO Institute, back in 1989 or whatever, back during Reagan’s time, had lambasted him for….

AJM: Exactly, for not being a free trader. And now all the Republicans who are so called free traders are pretending he was.

DH: Yeah. Hey listen. There is something else you could pull up for me too, if you wanted to. You’re a guy who has good research capabilities.

DH: Yeah, I’ll look at that. I’ll pull that up off of my computer. I’ll go back and look. It’s gotta be there. But you don’t know how many emails I get. I get hundreds of emails a day. The problem is when you put up a new mailbox, you’ve got to check it every 10 seconds, so now your day is shot. We’ve fussed ourselves into a state of play here in this modern age where nobody spends an hour and a half doing any deep thinking on anything. We’re all flipping levers and pushing buttons.

AJM: And then if you get a Yahoo account on top of that, three quarters of what you get is going to be spam, so you’re screwed.

DH: There’s something you can pull that I think would be interesting stuff. One point that I’m making in this thing that I’m writing is the fact that….are you familiar with the term “Awakening” in Anbar, the turn around in Anbar?

DH: I mean a lot has been written about that. What happened is that you had in Ramadi, Sean McFarland, head of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, the 1st Armor Division – they had an interesting chain of command there. He convinced a lot of Sunni tribesmen to join our side. Anyway, in 2006, September of 06, Sheik Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi was one of the first Sunni sheiks with the guts to stand up and publicly say “I’m taking on al-Qaeda”. He had a meeting. And he had about 50 other sheiks there.

See, al-Qaeda were Sunni, just the same as the majority of the residents of al Anbar province; they’re Sunnis, right? And early on, al-Qaeda had a natural partnership with the Sunni residents who had joined the organic Sunni insurgency against the Marines. They were well accepted. They came in to fight the Americans.

But then what happened was, as you probably know, they overplayed their hand. They brought their own version of strict muslim law in, strict sharia law. And they ended up taxing the Sunni transactions in Anbar Province in these places they controlled, 30 or 40 percent. They forcibly took the women from the tribes. They claimed that under the mohammedan tradition they had a right, as jihadists who were on a mission from Allah, to have temporary wives.

DH: Yeah. In August of 06, they killed this very well-liked Sheik in Ramadi named Jassim. Spelled J-A-S-S-I-M. That’s often called the tipping point.

They killed him because he had urged his tribesmen to join the police, which were being recruited and formed into a police force by the Americans. Now this is in the Ramadi area. And when they killed him, they threw his body in the brush and did not return it for burial. And an interesting thing about the muslims is that they are very strict about burying the body before dark on the day that person dies. So the islamists basically humiliated Jossim’s tribe, by having after killed him, essentially desecrating the body.

DH: Essentially; and that was in August. And these sheiks are all really savvy guys, and they are all calculators, right? They were trying to figure out if the Americans were going to stick with them, who was the strongest tribe to align with. In fact, Bing West wrote the book called the Strongest Tribe, because when he saw some of the Sunnis helping the Americans he asked “how come you’re doing that” and they pointed to a squad of Marines and said “because you, the Americans, are the strongest tribe.”

The whole point in Iraq and in the muslim world is to ally with the guy who is strong, because that can mean life or death for your family and your tribe. So the point is that al-Qaeda, who came in in 04, overplayed their hand and not only fought the Americans and killed Shiites, but they also brutalized their own Sunni colleagues.

But initially, the tribes were intimidated. In fact, if you read one of the intercepted al-Qaeda letters it gives the story about a well known Sunni tribesman who ran for office in Anbar province. He came in and campaigned in Ramadi. The whole tribe was so proud of him. Then ‘we put on Iraqi uniforms and went to his house and killed him’. He said now the tribe was very intimidated and is even afraid to say anything. It showed that the al-Qaeda attitude was ‘when we brutalize the people, that intimidates them, so that’s what we need to do’. The played the only card they had and that was brutality.

So fast forward here. In August they killed Jassim and tossed his body in the brush, and in September, this one tribal leader who was very outgoing, a very good speaker, and full of spirit – although he himself was a smuggler – his name was Sattar. You’ve heard the name, right?

DH: In fact there was some evidence that early on he was moving some stuff for the insurgents. These Sheiks are full service operators. (laughs).

But everybody in that part of the country is a smuggler. It’s like the plains Indians in the 1800s. Stealing the other tribes’ horses was not considered bad, it was a mark of honor. So my point is, he turned against al-Qaeda. He held a meeting called the Awakening, or that translated into the Awakening. He had about 50 sheiks there. That was on, I think, the 9th of September.

Now the Washington Post’s war reporter, Mr. (Tom) Ricks, wrote on, I think, the 14th of September, he disclosed a secret memorandum by the head of Marine Intelligence, named Devlin, Col. Devlin. It was construed to say that Anbar Province is “lost”.

DH: Yeah. But my point is, he published that article on this report, which, number one, it was a classified report – and the only thing publishing it could have done is motivate al-Qaeda to increase their bombing attacks. I mean publishing that report almost certainly accounted for more dead Marines!

DH: Yeah, yeah. Now go back to the timeline here. It was in mid August of 06, when the Devlin report was written – and incidentally the commanders vigorously refuted the Post’s characterization of the report – it was leaked, and made a front page story by Ricks about September 12th or 14th, about a month later. But on the 9th of September they had this remarkable, historic, confrontation of al-Qaeda by some 50 tribal sheiks, headed by Sattar, which started, or rather codified the Awakening. And even after they assassinated Sattar, which happened many months later, the Awakening continued and spread throughout Iraq. I mean, this seriously helped turn around Anbar.

Now here’s what I wanted to know, that you may be able to research for me.

DH: If you could pull the Post articles by Ricks, and pull the articles by the military. The DOD gives weekly conferences. I’m sure when Sattar had his public press announcement with all of the sheiks in attendance – he made a big deal out of this. Instead of a secret meeting where they didn’t want to tell anybody, this was a ‘coming out’ for these sheiks, where they are saying publicly that “we’re going to kill al-Qaeda and we’re on the side of the coalition”. That was huge.

My point is that the Washington Post, even knowing that this new development had occurred, making for a new situation in Anbar, they printed the old one. They printed the report that was a month old and basically said that things are going south in Anbar.

Now let’s put that in context of why they did that. That was the same time that we were on the threshold of either staying in Iraq or leaving Iraq, because the Iraq study group was soon to come into the Whitehouse with their recommendations – which was essentially that we were to leave. So you had the blue ribbon group marching this thing to the Whitehouse, they were going to present it to Bush and the Congress in two months, either in November or December. It’s September now, so the Post wanted to keep pounding this theme that we were losing. Their goal was to contribute to the stampede to leave Iraq.

And happily, we said wait a minute, we are not leaving. And President Bush said ‘not only am I not retreating, I’m going to send more troops and we’re going to win!’ So in January of 07, a few months later, he announced the Surge.

But my point is, the Washington Post, I think, had the information about the Awakening. They HAD to have had the information! But they ran with the month old report that they twisted to say “all is lost” in Anbar. It’s kind of like they took the report that the guy had terminal cancer, and they released it the day after the operation where the guy was cured, right?

AJM: Yep, because they wanted him to die. They had an insurance policy out on him.

DH: I think when they were meeting in that editorial room to decide what to run, I think the last thing that they wanted to run, as they were easing Bush towards the exit - they thought, was to run a story that said ‘wait a minute, there may be light at the end of the tunnel’.

So pull up what the Post wrote and what the DOD released. Remember the timeline. The MNF-Iraq, Multi National Force in Iraq, was putting out press releases every week: Marines doing good in Anbar, the 101st does such and such, etc, etc.

DH: But they are constantly being ignored by the mainstream press. I’m sure that they did a report on the Awakening press conference by Sattar, OK. I think it was the 9th of September, 2006. So pull that and pull Rick’s articles and also see if the Post or the Times followed this Awakening press conference to any degree, this ground breaking press conference where a bunch of the tribes came together and stood up.

AJM: If they didn’t follow it, if they didn’t carry it, it would have been strictly neglect on their part because it was published elsewhere. There were several very good inbeds with the Marines during that time.

DH: Yeah, you might see if Tony Perry had it, who has written a lot of pretty good stuff. Tony Perry with the LA Times.

AJM: I think so, but he didn’t just write about Mosul. He tried to keep a running report of major activities. There was another guy, a blogger, Bill Roggio….

AJM: So those guys probably had something. They were on the cutting edge. If they published it, everyone saw it.

DH: Yeah. But you know what’s funny about the Washington Post? They’ve got rabbit ears for defeat, right? In March 26th of 2003, when we were driving on Baghdad, Ricks wrote this report, based on an anonymous conversation he had with some guy back in the States, that we were bogging down and wouldn’t take Baghdad for months. He barely got the column off before Baghdad fell. (laughs)

DH: I went back to find out what was his basis. There was no basis for it. It was thin air!

DH: The problem with that is every person is entitled to their personal views, but he manifested that dislike for the war in what was supposed to be objective reporting.

But let’s get back to the things that are important. I’m sure people have opinions about me too that aren’t the best in the world.

DH: The point is though, I think they ran Rick’s thing on the 14th with the Post well aware of the Awakening having occurred. I’ll be curious to see if the Awakening was mentioned in the Post at all.

AJM: OK. I’ll see what I can dig up. I’m sure they mentioned it subsequently…

DH: Maybe not. I think the attitude of the Post was cut and run– this was a tense time. You had the cartoon where Jim Baker was taking Bush Junior to the woodshed.

DH: He was going to be spanked for his ‘mis-adventure’ in Iraq. And we were going to diplomatically use the term ‘redeploy” as a way to get out of Dodge. That was a very tense time and the American left was counting on that occurring. So I think they were very careful about not putting out anything that smacked of good news.

DH: But that’s a point I want to check out and verify. So if you could check, that would be great.

DH: Yeah (laughs). Instead of these incessant phone calls; while I’m half way off of a tractor and I get these calls. It’s Jim saying “I’m feeling good, it’s my lunch break, let me ask you a few questions” (laughing).

AJM: Very funny. Usually I call you early in the week to find out what your schedule is.

AJM: That’s the problem. You say call back Thursday at noon. I call back and you’re on the tractor again or driving through some remote canyon.

DH: You know what the problem is, is I get five guys all calling me at once with emergencies.

AJM: (laughs) Well, let me get a couple of issues in anyway if you don’t’ mind.

AJM: OK. Let’s start off with the big one. Obviously you’ve heard that General McChrystal has been called back from Afghanistan.

AJM: Apparently they had Rolling Stone magazine who was given access to follow him and his Lieutenants around for a month or so to do a report on Afghanistan. Most of the reporting was pretty straightforward, but the boys let slip out a few less than complimentary comments on Joe Biden and the President. Of course, that makes front page news.

DH: Well let me tell you. If Rolling Stone magazine actually let slip a few non complimentary statements about a democrat, THAT is news!

DH: The news is man bites dog: “Rolling Stone Criticizes Liberals – End of the World Tomorrow”.

DH: But I haven’t read the piece yet. Obviously, I’m not a Rolling Stone aficionado.

AJM: Yeah, but as you know, McChrystal is either already back or in transit back to face the boy wonder, who might very well fire him.

DH: Well, my position is General McChrystal is a good man. He did some good work in Iraq. And military leaders should be judged on their effectiveness in the theatre of battle, not on the personal relationships with the political leadership.

DH: Secondly, here’s my statement that I think goes to the core of this issue, of critical statements by the military of the civilian leadership. Every single Soldier, Sailor, Airmen and Marine knew about the fact that the Democrat Party, as a national political policy, attempted to stop the Surge in Iraq, which is now proven to have been the game winner in Iraq. So one of the touchdown passes that was thrown in Iraq was the surge, where we increased military forces by five brigades. Joe Biden immediately offered the second resolution of the year, of 2007, after the President announced the Surge, criticizing the Surge and offered a Senate resolution that it NOT be undertaken. Hillary Clinton signed on to that resolution. And Obama was waving his pom poms in support as well.

They ultimately went with the House anti-surge resolution, which passed with near unanimity among the Democrat Conference in the House of Representatives. And it passed with near unanimity among the Democrat conference in the United States Senate.

So everybody who wears the uniform of the United States, knows that when one of the game winning plays was executed in Iraq, the Democrats voted against it and tried desperately to block that game winning pass.

Now you can’t expect your military people to be zombies, to be completely oblivious, to pay no attention whatsoever to who supports them and who does not support them. And it’s clear that the other side not only gained politically from the difficult turns in the war in Iraq, but tried to stop one of the backbreaking strategies against the enemy. You can’t begrudge Americans who wear the uniform in their resentment of the people that tried to keep them from winning. In fact, the democrat leader, Mr. Reid, declared we lost!

Wearing the uniform, they are supposed to keep that resentment, their political feelings, undercover. The problem with an informal magazine interview, especially one that takes place over a long period of time, is that ultimately, you will have unprotected conversations. You’ll have conversations when people don’t have their guard up in which they’ll tell you what they really think.

Americans are encouraged to have opinions, especially political opinions, and to be very candid about them. And when you are sitting around a base camp, soldiers will talk about American politics. And those people in uniform know full well who tried to beat a path of retreat and defeat in Iraq. And that certainly has changed some of their attitudes with respect to then Senator Obama and Senator Biden, and now Secretary of State Clinton, who voted to stop the game winning pass in Iraq. These people know that. They let their hair down and talked about it, just like they talk about football and girls and lots of other things.

And that’s the problem with having these imbedded reporters. Imbedded reporters catch military people not only when they are making official statements, but they are also with them when they are making unofficial, but nonetheless very candid statements about lots of different issues.

DH: You know when we invaded Iraq, I objected to the idea that we were going to imbed the press with the military. Because I didn’t trust them. I thought we were going to have a lot of anti-military reporters where they would try to show our soldiers at their very worst. I thought that they would have a prejudice against the military. It turned I was mostly wrong. The initial reports from the invasion were mostly very positive, as you know. There were a few Tom Rickses and…

AJM: Well there was some of that going on. There are a couple of guys I can remember distinctly who had an anti-US, anti-war agenda the whole time they were there.

DH: Exactly. But my point is the Administration; this Administration has embraced imbedded reporting. And Obama and Biden had been more than happy to trot out these reports when the war in Iraq was deemed to be going badly, they were referring to them all the time to make their case that things were bad and unwinnable.

So if you are going to ask a Marine or Soldier to let his hair down, and tell you what he really thinks about something, and the President’s policy has put that reporter in your base camp to talk to you over a long period of time, I think it’s a little bit disingenuous, hypocritical and thin skinned for the Administration – who embedded the reporters – to complain when Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines, and even Generals, tell those reporters what they really think about lots of things, including politics.

AJM: Yep. That’s an excellent point. Now when it comes to Mr. Obama, you mentioned Biden and Hillary’s resolution, their legislation, but Obama was right there with them, just as rotten as the rest.

DH: You might want to pull up Obama’s vote. I believe it was Resolution Number 2.

DH: Make sure. He might not have. It might have been another Obama political calculation. Always be sure. Pull that record out. In the initial resolution that Biden wrote, Hillary Clinton was a cosponsor. And Obama wasn’t a member of the Foreign Affairs committee. Ultimately, I don’t know if you know what happened there, but they didn’t vote on Biden’s resolution in the full Senate. What happened is they wrote a resolution and passed it to the same effect with essentially the same anti-surge message in the House. The House democrats passed it.

AJM: I’ll double check, but I could write a book on all the Obama anti-war quotes form that time.

DH: I wouldn’t take the quotes, I’d take the vote. Here’s why. This is cause and effect. There was an action by the President of the United States to send 5 additional brigades to a war theatre to win a war. And those 5 brigades did, in effect, provide one of the main dimensions of that victory. It wasn’t the only thing, but it was a touchdown pass, if you’re going to analogize that to a football game. It was very clearly a touchdown. Eight months later, attacks on Iraqis and on American troops dropped by more than 75%. And even most critics acknowledged that was largely due to the surge. So the President undertook a military operation that ended up being highly successful, and the Democrats didn’t just say bad things about it or simply begrudge it: They voted against it!

If you read the language that they finally went with, it had very few “where as”’s, it had very little verbiage. It simply said, paraphrasing now: ‘We the following, disagree with the President sending an additional five brigades to Iraq’.

AJM: And I am positive, because I was watching at the time, that Mr. Obama was on the wrong side of that vote.

DH: If he was in the chamber for the vote, I’m sure he was. He was still criticizing the Surge a year later when it was obvious to just about any thinking observer that it had succeeded. But I would still check it.

DH: They were fighting each other over who would get out of Dodge the quickest.

AJM: And to see who could most bitterly complain about the Surge the quickest. So as far as I’m concerned he’s right in there with the Kerrys, the Reids’ and the Bidens of the world. I will email you the vote on Mr. Obama when I look up that other stuff. I remember at the time looking that up. I’ll look up the resolution and give you a link to his vote.

DH: I have the language of the resolution, so I don’t need that. But certainly if you can find the stuff on the Awakening, I’d like to see that. I think that’s a great commentary on the American press. They had this dramatic breakthrough, which along with some other things, showed light at the end of the tunnel. And the Post ignored that.

AJM: I’m assuming that that isn’t surprising to you. You were in that town for a long time. You know the Washington Post’s history.

DH: That’s true. But I’m interested to see if they ran anything at all on it.

AJM: I remember back in the day when you were helping Reagan try to keep Central America from falling into communist hands. The press hated you even worse, including the Washington Post.