The 20th anniversary of the invasion of
Iraq
brings up wildly conflicting emotions for me.
I have vivid memories of my first nights in the country. I called home from a satellite phone on the tarmac of Baghdad International Airport to let my loved ones know I was alive. I remember walking the streets of the Mansour district, even sharing a meal with an Iraqi agent in his house. Then, there were the midnight raids, late-night meetings in safe houses, the intense terror of firefights, and periods of near death. There was carnage on the streets with dead and mutilated bodies. I engaged with a bewildered population that did not know how to greet the invading U.S. and allied forces. These are my memories. Some may disagree and dismiss them, but my experiences endure in my mind to this day.
I was part of a joint U.S. special operations and intelligence community team that was deployed to northern Iraq beginning in late 2002. I then relocated to a special operations base in the Gulf for the pending infiltration into Iraq. It was a time of hope and excitement. I had been involved in Iraqi operations for some time and knew well the terrible nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Having handled high-level Iraqi agents and heard firsthand about the human rights horrors inside the country, I always felt that there was a moral piece to our pending invasion. Saddam was one of the cruelest dictators on the planet. There was a sense that a new dawn could soon come for the Iraqi people. Our agents had hope. And the
CIA
case officers did as well. We thought we were doing something special.
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Notice that I make no mention of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.
As an officer of the Near East Division, I was never involved in the collection or analysis of whether or not Iraq possessed such unconventional weapons. I do recall watching the speech of then-Secretary of State
Colin Powell
at the United Nations, from our team house in northern Iraq. None of us had a clue where he was getting his information from. We scratched our heads and thought, “OK, there must be reporting streams from other parts of the intelligence community that we were not read into.” We had no doubt about the justness of our cause or that we would be victorious in the end. But WMD? No idea.
The opening salvo of the war on March 19-20, 2003, was surreal to watch. I had left northern Iraq several weeks prior and was in Doha, Qatar, briefing senior U.S. military commanders, including Gens. Tommy Franks and John Abizaid. Soon after, I redeployed to a special operations base in the region, linking up with naval special warfare elements for a ride into Baghdad airport. I remember catching a shower prior to the infiltration, but still, I stuck out wearing jeans and an old T-shirt. Months of living in the mountains causes one to embrace a casual dress code.
Getting into Baghdad required a several-hour, low-altitude, high-risk flight. Amazingly, I fell asleep, perhaps due to the adrenaline rush wearing off. That is, until the door gunner opened up somewhere along the way! Hitting the airport, I was amazed we were finally on the ground. In April 2003, there were few signs of the resistance that would soon haunt the United States. Yes, there were still combat operations underway, but that was against Iraqi military and paramilitary units. So as we tracked down Iraqi regime high-value targets, or HVTs, one by one, members of the famed “deck of 55 cards” that Central Command had dreamed up and distributed like we were trading baseball cards, we saw this as part of a new beginning.
This is where the wheels began to come off.
The orders from Washington policy officials with no field experience were striking. They wanted to disband the entire Iraqi military and rid the government of all members of Saddam’s Baath party. This immediately put tens of thousands of regime officials and hardened military officers and conscripts out of work and on the street. The CIA team there — including myself and Charlie,
a legendary operations officer
and the station chief — protested vehemently to Washington. It was to no avail.
To be frank, I can think of few worse policy decisions in the history of America’s international relations. I had never seen Charlie so angry, including in face-to-face confrontations with the senior Coalition Provisional Authority figures. Thinking of themselves as the grand viceroys of Iraq, these officials were inexperienced Middle East neophytes. Charlie, the most accomplished Arabist in CIA’s history, knew right then that the grassroots of an insurgency was being born.
But our work continued.
I heard firsthand stories of a mass execution carried out several years prior by Saddam’s security forces in western Iraq. If we could investigate these crimes, I thought, we could do some good and bring some closure to the Iraqi people. My naivete was real, however. Exiting town, as I sat on the back of an open unarmored Humvee, a young boy jumped out and threw a rock at my head. I ducked, and it missed. On the ride back to our team house, I was quite curious about this incident. Surely this must be a one-off. Alas, this was only a harbinger of far worse events to come.
Six months later, I was home in the U.S. I’ll never forget my arrival at Dulles airport. I departed for northern Iraq when my son was six months old. When I returned six months later, he did not recognize me. He just looked at me blankly. It was one of the most heartbreaking moments of my life. I’ll never forget that sinking feeling. I thought we needed lots of time to get reacquainted. Back at headquarters, I received the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the agency’s second-highest award. I had been involved in multiple operations in which we captured top regime officials. I was incredibly proud of my service, but more in awe of the intelligence officers and special operations personnel I served with. The U.S. had not found any Iraqi WMDs, and the Coalition Provisional Authority was a hot mess. Still, I maintained hope for the Iraqi people.
Several months later, I left the Gulf on another posting. This time, the family came with me. I didn’t realize it at that time, but additional lengthy deployments beckoned. This would later include a much longer 12-month stint in eastern Afghanistan. The sacrifices that CIA families make for our country and our people are extraordinary.
What are my top-line conclusions from my time in Iraq?
I was a blunt instrument of the U.S. government. At the time, I gladly answered the bell. I suppose I can defend the invasion on human rights grounds, given the barbarity of Saddam and his henchmen. Yet two numbers haunt me to this day. 4,431 and 31,994.
Those are the number of Americans killed and wounded in action, per Pentagon
statistics
. Of course, this doesn’t include the staggering number of Iraqi casualties, many civilians among them. War is a nasty business. A terrible price is often paid for hubris.
Should we have invaded Iraq? Knowing what we know now, this is not a fair question. If you judge our justification as the need to eliminate Iraq’s (nonexistent) WMD, clearly, “no” is the only answer.
The CIA, in particular, suffered a major credibility hit from which it has taken years to recover. Fortunately, the agency’s accurate prediction of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has restored some trust in the CIA. But U.S. interests in Iraq remain challenged, and hostile Iranian influence abounds.
Nevertheless, I am proud of my service. The CIA officers I served with in Iraq are friends for life. My best friend was with me on the infiltration. He’s the godfather of one of my children. Another friend was a member of our security team. He saved my life during a raid and received the Intelligence Star, the most hallowed agency award for heroism. Appropriately, he doesn’t pay for his beers when we meet up at the Vienna Inn, that venerable watering hole in northern Virginia where spies frequently meet!
Today, that inn serves more than the cause of great friendship in the present. It is where we solemnly toast our fellow intelligence officers, those we served with and those we lost. More beers will be hoisted on March 20, the anniversary of the start of the war on Iraq.
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Marc Polymeropoulos is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. A former CIA senior operations officer, he retired in 2019 after a 26-year career serving in the Near East and South Asia. His book Clarity in Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the CIA was published in June 2021 by Harper Collins.
