The Myth of AQI - Andrew Tilghman
September 7, 2007 7:53 am Sunni Insurgents Fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, IraqThe Myth of AQI - Andrew Tilghma, Washington Monthl, October 2007
Alex Rossmiller, who worked in Iraq as an intelligence officer for the Department of Defense, says that real uncertainties exist in assigning responsibility for attacks. “It was kind of a running joke in our office,” he recalls. “We would sarcastically refer to everybody as al-Qaeda.”
To describe AQI’s presence, intelligence experts cite a spectrum of estimates, ranging from 8 percent to 15 percent. The fact that such “a big window” exists, says Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, indicates that “[those experts] really don’t have a very good perception of what is going on.”
It’s notable that military intelligence reports have opted to cite a figure at the very top of that range. But even the low estimate of 8 percent may be an overstatement, if you consider some of the government’s own statistics.