IGNORE MY INTELLIGENCE AT YOUR PERIL (I AM NOT AS STUPID AS I LOOK) 269between Saddam and al-Qaeda, although “dead enders” Donald Rums-
feld and Dick Cheney continued to suggest that the ties existed, in order to
justify their inevitable invasion of Iraq.^5
Bush and his neocon advisers were intent on overthrowing Saddam
following 9/11, and nothing was going to stop them. Their other justifica-
tion for going to war—Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction—
also turned out to be false.
In early June 2003, after kicking off Babylon Inc. operations in Baghdad
with the able assistance of my Iraqi partner Imad, I traveled overland
from Baghdad back to Amman, Jordan. An hour after leaving Baghdad, I
stopped off again in Ramadi to pay a courtesy call on Imad’s uncle Omar,
one of Iraq’s most respected and influential Sunni tribal sheiks. Omar was
an Iraqi first and foremost, but over the years, he and his family had also
been friends of the US government.
Apparently assuming I was still connected to the CIA, Sheik Omar
asked me over tea to relay an important message to the Bush administra-
tion. First, he wanted to thank the administration for getting rid of the
curse of Saddam. Second, he said, you need to understand that removing
Saddam was primarily of benefit to our mutual enemy, the Shia of Iran.
Islamic Iran was never able to get rid of secular Saddam on its own,
and now Iran’s malignant influence in Iraq would increase dramatically
thanks to the US invasion. Third, he cautioned that Iraqis were proud
people and would not long tolerate an American occupation, particularly
when so many mistakes were being made. He referenced the very recent
(May 23, 2003) disbanding of Iraq’s entire military by Coalition Provi-
sional Authority administrator Paul Bremer, a strategically idiotic move
that ignored the advice given to Bremer by my former CIA colleagues,
including Mac, among others. Finally, Sheik Omar said bluntly that if the
United States did not change course and pull out of Iraq, Sunnis from
Anbar province would begin to attack American troops. This was a clear
and stark warning about the deadly insurgency that was indeed soon tar-
geting and killing Americans.
I thanked Sheik Omar for his hospitality and his advice and promised I