WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The dramatic drop in violence in Iraq is due in large part to a secret program the U.S. military has used to kill terrorists, according to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward.
Bob Woodward's book, "The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008," came out Monday.
The program -- which Woodward compares to the World War II era Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb -- must remain secret for now or it would "get people killed," Woodward said Monday on CNN's Larry King Live.
"It is a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have," Woodward said.
In "The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008," Woodward disclosed the existence of secret operational capabilities developed by the military to locate, target and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent leaders.
National security adviser Stephen Hadley, in a written statement reacting to Woodward's book, acknowledged the new strategy. Yet he disputed Woodward's conclusion that the "surge" of 30,000 U.S. troops into Iraq was not the primary reason for the decline in violent attacks.
"It was the surge that provided more resources and a security context to support newly developed techniques and operations," Hadley wrote.
Woodward, associate editor of the Washington Post, wrote that along with the surge and the new covert tactics, two other factors helped reduce the violence.
One was the decision of militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to order a cease-fire by his Mehdi Army. The other was the "Anbar Awakening" movement that saw Sunni tribes aligning with U.S. troops to battle al Qaeda in Iraq.
Woodward told Larry King that while there is a debate over how much credit the new secret operations should get for the drop in violence, he concluded it "accounts for a good portion."
"I would somewhat compare it to the Manhattan Project in World War II," he said "It's a ski slope right down in a matter of months, cutting the violence in half. This isn't going to happen with the bunch of joint security stations or the surge."
A few months back there was a online exclusive story in Newsweek that discussed a proposed US strategy called the "Salvador option" or something to that effect. This clear reference to the US-backed strategy adopted by the Rightist regime in El Salvador in the early 1980s would support the construction and training of local militias to find and destroy insurgents, assassinate extremists, abduct terrorist suspects, etc. I am not sure Woodward is talking about the same thing, but I find it interesting if not a little troubling. I mean, on the one hand it could be very effective, save the committement of US troops, and bring down overall levels of violence. However, in El Salvador it resulted in the regime killing upwards of 1000 suspected insurgents per month--most of whom were labor leaders, teachers, student activists, etc participating in non-violent organizing, not participating in violence. I hope this not the case here and that the if the use of local militias is indeed the strategy that the US is using that this time it uses much more discretion and better intelligence.
2 comments:
Woodward was on Fresh Air today. It was an interesting interview.
And another thing he says in his book, aside from what the above article states, is that Bush basically continued to blatantly lie about how the "war" was going. And often made military decisions without consulting the military. And other beautiful things for the Commander-in-Chief to do. Hooray for America?!?
Hooray for Zoidberg!
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