whenever a terrorist or insurgent organization controls ground like zarqawi in fallujah, it gives them credibility that they wouldn t otherwise have. he was clearly the leader we were tracking. my force was going after him, and we were constantly trying to figure out where he was. zarqawi was a very clever man. he was quite intelligent. not simply about how he could create murder and mischief but how he could essentially remain invisible. we d have reports the same day he was in mosul or he was in al qaim, hundreds of miles apart, or he was in baghdad one day and in ramadi an hour before that. you say, there s no way. zarqawi was good at evading capture. he had good operational security. didn t use cell phones and whatnot that we could track effectively.
necessary to secure fallujah on behalf of the iraqi people. this fight starts. the first thing that happens is we re going to go in and get control of fallujah. and very quickly, it boils down into a fight, and then to a siege. they were fighting zarqawi and al qaeda. we realized, you know, holy [ muted ], this guy is for real. u.s. troops are attacking on several fronts. but they re under fire everywhere, and the casualties are mounting. as an effort was made to recapture the city, it was pushed initially and it was halted for political reasons. tonight there are reports that two of the three marine battalions surrounding fallujah have now pulled back from their front line positions.
the military has brought criminal charges against six american soldiers and their commander has been suspended. but the worst damage may be yet to come as the pictures spread throughout the arab world sparking anger and outrage. absolutely helped zarqawi, helped in recruiting. a lot of the foreigners we captured and asked them, why were they here? they said to avenge their brothers from abu ghraib. zarqawi was given a gift. he d gotten credibility fighting the americans with the siege of fallujah. and then you had this moral component that says this is what the americans do. they claim saddam hussein was bad, but they are just as bad. here s proof. was it a disaster? maybe it was worse than a disaster from my strategic level. it was just left to imagine it being much worse.
the most visible sign of that transition was in march of 2004, which is what s called first fallujah. the battle of first fallujah. it was insurgency. and zarqawi was leading it. fallujah exploded when four contractors were ambushed. killed. their bodies were burned and mutilated. one of them was my old operations sergeant in the rangers. the bodies were hung famously from the traffic bridge, and there were people dancing in the streets. there were young children holding pieces of american bodies almost like you d wave around a lollipop. the first thing you feel is just rage. you feel frustration. you want to get in and solve the problem. they want to kill innocent life. to try to get us to quit. we re not going to. and our military commanders will take whatever action is
jsoc is an organization that was put together to do the nation s most sensitive missions. i was the senior intelligence officer working for stan mcchrystal while he was the commander of joint special operations command. i was transitioning into the role of deputy director at the national security agency. and was very engaged in the hunt for zarqawi. i immediately went on a tour of forces that were deployed and it became clear that our effort in iraq was going to have to increase significantly. as soon as i entered the country, it was evident the insurgency growing, which turned out to be abu musab al zarqawi, was much stronger than people appreciated, and we were likely in for a long fight. so my mission was to be focused against that enemy. where was this transition from saddam to zarqawi? the most visible sign of that transition was in march of 2004, which is what s called first fallujah. the battle of first fallujah.