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ANDERSON COOPER: Why do
insurgents fight? The question is being explored in
the new film called "Meeting Resistance". It's also
something CNN's Michael Ware has risked his life to
do. We spoke to him earlier.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Michael, what we see in these interviews with
early insurgents is clearly that the presence of U.S.
forces was a motivating factor in getting a lot of
these people to fight against the U.S. How much of
the insurgency now is being driven by just the mere
presence of U.S. forces?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, from day one,
Anderson, that's been one of the primary motivations.
Certainly for the nationalist insurgency, if that's
what you'd like to call it, both on the Sunni side
and the Shia side.
Sure, there's lots of agendas and factions within
factions. But at the end of the day, what was grossly
underestimated from the very beginning was the sense
of Iraqi nationalism, the sense of Iraqi national
pride.
I remember in 2003 meeting so many professional
military officers -- Iraq's equivalent to West
Pointers -- who were simply aggrieved at the dishonor
of, firstly, having a foreign force, be it western or
any other kind, occupying their country: tanks in
their streets, invading their homes, searching their
cupboards, touching their women, be it just for the
purposes of an ordinary military search.
Then you add to that the egregious shame of the
disbanding of the Iraqi military and everything that
stood for and the status that went with it for these
men -- which most in the administration now admit was
a terrible blunder -- and that goes a long way to
explaining the heart of the Sunni and even the Shia
insurgency in Iraq.
COOPER: This month we've seen suicide attacks down
some 50 percent since January, I believe it is.
Civilian death toll down -- although still some 800,
I think, last month, killed Iraqis. The U.S. military
death toll down, as well.
Who is still fighting? I mean, if al Qaeda is badly
damaged -- al Qaeda in Iraq is badly damaged, as some
in the U.S. are saying, "The Washington Post"
reporting that's a belief many commanders have -- if
the Sunnis have awoken and have turned against al
Qaeda in al Anbar and elsewhere, who is it now who's
still fighting?
WARE: Well, the real enemy America has had since the
moment it invaded, ignored for years and only woke up
to perhaps a year or so ago. And it's the real winner
of all the wars since 9/11. And that's Iran,
Anderson.
Al Qaeda is under pressure. But it was never going to
be the big winner of the Iraq theater. It was never
welcome. It was only ever tolerated. And the way that
al Qaeda has been put under the pressure it's under
is because America finally accepted the deal that the
Sunni former military officers offered them four or
five years ago.
And think about it: "al Qaeda is crippled." We herald
this in headlines, because it's only down to 30 bomb
attacks a month. Can you imagine if there was 30
attacks in Israel every month or America or
Australia? Yet we still call that a victory.
So al Qaeda is far from gone. It will always persist.
But the great enemy, the one that's fermenting most
of the violence and owns the political stage,
continues to be Iran, Anderson.
COOPER: Michael Ware, appreciate the reporting.
Thanks, Michael.
WARE: Thank you, mate.