Not true and a very ignorant statement. The Anbar sheiks were the heart of the insurgency and headed Al Queda in Iraq; in fact their people staffed and ran it. Their seperation from Al Qaeda et al was a year-long and visible process. When it was publicized that Anbar had significant estimated oil reserves the Anbar sheiks ended operations against the Coaltion almost overnight. Once they made peace with the Coalition Al Qaeda turned against them.
This is all very "duh" information for anyone who followed Iraq closely i.e., read the daily intel reports and BUAs first hand. << clue.
What Timmerman means is the Al Anbar sheiks offered their services early in the game, and Bremmer snubbed them, thus starting the insurgency.
“Not true and a very ignorant statement.”
Can you refute this quote from Joe Klein in Time?
“As I reported in September 2005, there is also the scandalous reality that an alliance with the tribes was proposed by U.S. Army intelligence officers as early as October 2003 and rejected by L. Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority on the grounds that “tribes are part of the past. They have no place in the new democratic Iraq.”