Iraq Insurgency and Bush’s “Surge” 865majority won most of the seats, but Kurdish leaders
sought to form their own state and secede. In the
south, the Shiites embraced a messianic strain of
Islam and had strong ties to the radical Islamic cler-
ics who ruled Iran. The Sunnis, adherents of the ver-
sion of Islam that prevailed in most of the Arab
world from Saudi Arabia through North Africa,
dominated the region around Baghdad. Post-
Saddam Iraq was on the verge of fracturing into sep-
arate nations.
Complicating matters further was the decision
by terrorists to wreck the new government by dri-
ving a deeper wedge between Sunnis and Shiites.
On February 22, 2006, insurgents blew up the
golden dome of the Askariya Mosque in Sammara, a
Shiite shrine. Enraged Shiites attacked Sunni
mosques and clerics, triggering an endless cycle of
reprisals. Some Iraqi military and police officers
formed extralegal death squads to eliminate Sunni
leaders and terrorize their followers. Sunni militias
responded in kind.
In the fall of 2006, an Iraqi tribunal convicted
Saddam of killing 148 Shiites, the first of several
planned trials to chronicle his regime’s genocide. But
on December 30, 2006, the Iraqi government dis-
patched Saddam to the gallows. Instead of marking
the triumph of law over tyranny, the executioners
resembled the Shiite death squads: Hangmen
taunted Saddam and chanted the name of Muqtada
Al Sadr, a Shiite cleric whose militias caused much of
the chaos.
Through it all, American officials groped their
way through the bewildering labyrinth of Iraqi poli-
tics and religion. U.S. policies seemed to offend
everyone. Often the only apparent issue uniting Iraqi
factions was their condemnation of “infidel” troops in
Iraq. Yet thoughtful Iraqis conceded that in the
absence of American soldiers, Iraq would likely frac-
ture, plunging the country into full-scale civil war and
perhaps setting the entire Middle East ablaze. Bush
decided to persist.
Attacks on security forces and civilians intensi-
fied and casualties mounted. As the 2006 U.S. con-
gressional elections approached, the war was costing
$2 billion a week; the annual U.S. deficit soared to a
half trillion dollars. Democrats, most of whom had
voted for the war, increasingly withdrew their sup-
port. Some Republicans, too, defected from the
president’s position.
When the midterm votes were counted, the
Republicans were decisively defeated. Democrats now
controlled Congress—and the budget. Several daysIn 2006 an Iraqi tribunal convicted Saddam Hussein of murdering his own people and sentenced him to death by hanging. What might have
been a defining moment in the emergence of a new Iraq was marred when he was rushed to the gallows and taunted by his executioners.