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Length: 7:03
HALA GORANI: Well, the
daily reports of violence out of Iraq suggest just
how dangerous the streets have become. Even walking
to the market or going to work could cost you your
life.
CLANCY: Take, for example, a new United Nations
report that says the number of civilians killed
recently is far greater than the initial estimates.
Equally troubling, how many victims show signs of
torture.
All right. Let's get details of that report for July
and August in a moment.
But first, that was, of course, a period when the
United Nations said it was the deadliest yet. But we
want to go inside the insurgency, take you there to
learn why at least one group seems to be getting even
stronger.
CNN has exclusive footage of Al Qaeda in Iraq and
some rare interviews with some of the insurgent
leaders, the commanders themselves.
Here's our Michael Ware.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Until
now, most communications from Al Qaeda in Iraq have
been carefully crafted videos like this one, showing
the shooting down of a U.S. Apache helicopter. What's
unprecedented about this video is we hear about from
al Qaeda in English.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just to let you know that our
lives are nothing beside our religion. We will bomb
everything.
WARE: Insurgent groups and the U.S. military now say
al Qaeda has become the darkest core of Iraq's
insurgency.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just to let you know that we love
to die as you love to live.
WARE: An organization so secretive that despite
seized documents, intelligence, and interrogations,
the U.S. military still struggles to know how it
works.
COL. SEAN MACFARLAND, U.S. ARMY: We don't have a 100
percent understanding of that. And the enemy tries
very hard to keep us from understanding.
WARE: There have been successes: cells disrupted,
leaders captured, and most stunning of all, the
founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
executed in a U.S. airstrike. But reality on the
ground suggests the U.S. military is far from
crippling the deadly network.
Abu Khaled al-Iraqi is a top commander from a
powerful alliance of local Islamic insurgent groups.
In his first television interview, he tells CNN
Zarqawi's death brought change, but not what the U.S.
had in mind. Instead, younger even more radical al
Qaeda leaders.
ABU KHALED AL-IRAQI, SR. IRAQI ISLAMIST COMMANDER
(through translator): Al-Zarqawi is one person, and
al Qaeda is thousands of people.
WARE: Local Sunni insurgent groups more moderate than
al Qaeda, and Iraqi nationalists, mostly from
Saddam's former military, agree. Al Qaeda is becoming
stronger.
Listen to this nationalist insurgent commander. He
says al Qaeda's decentralized structure, seemingly
endless money, and growing support in and out of Iraq
is overpowering local guerrilla groups.
ABU MOHAMMED, INSURGENT COMMANDER (through
translator): Al Qaeda's leadership is different, but
as an idea it has expanded, because most other groups
pressureed between U.S. forces and al Qaeda and have
had leaders killed or captured and al Qaeda took over
their fighters.
WARE: That's an assessment shared by many in the U.S.
military. American commanders like Sean MacFarland
confront the al Qaeda-led insurgency every day.
SEAN MACFARLAND: What we're trying to do here is
counteract a strong presence of al Qaeda that's
intermixed with some lingering Ba'athist influence.
WARE: Four months ago, Abu Khaled's insurgent group
was distancing itself from al Qaeda. Now he says
there's no difference at all.
KHALED (through translator): Al Qaeda works within
the resistance and is part of the resistance.
WARE: The Sunni groups say fear of civil war with
Shiites in control of the Iraqi government and
unchecked Iranian interference is driving them to al
Qaeda.
ABU MOHAMMED (through translator): America came to
Iraq saying it would free us from tyranny and
dictatorship. But that hasn't happened. Because the
U.S. increased the power of Shia religious
organizations, gave them the government, and we
regard this as giving power to Iran.
WARE: If so, it is Zarqawi's most enduring legacy,
his plan all along to spark sectarian conflict and
draw Sunni insurgents to al Qaeda's cause. The
insurgents say al Qaeda's hard line is gaining
traction where there was little before.
ABU MOHAMMED: (through translator): When the
nationalist forces become weak, that leaves al Qaeda
as a strong force in the area.
WARE: Yet, the U.S. military is still hoping
disillusioned moderate Sunnis reject al Qaeda.
MACFARLAND: Al Qaeda is herding them back toward us.
So, to an extent, the Sunnis may be trapped between
the devil and deep blue sea.
WARE: But Sunni insurgents know one day the United
States will leave Iraq. And they believe al Qaeda
will not.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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Length: 2:20
CLANCY: Well, Michael Ware joins uses now live from
Baghdad.
Michael, the epicenter of a lot of this is in Anbar
province. Its capital is Ramadi. President Bush, I
guess quoting his own military intelligence sources,
is saying there's evidence there that al Qaeda is
influencing events on the ground.
What's your read?
WARE: Well, as President Bush and Osama bin Laden
himself agree, Jim, Al Anbar province is the
centerpiece of the global war on terror for both of
them. In fact, President Bush has been highlighting
this in recent weeks.
He talked about seized al Qaeda documents revealing
their plans to essentially set up a government in
Ramadi. Well, what we found is that U.S. Marines'
intelligence has discovered that, for example, al
Qaeda's infiltration of the oil ministry out there is
so extensive, that it has a finger in all aspects of
it, from its delivery from refineries in the north,
to its distribution through the government office,
right down to the gas stations.
U.S. commanders say al Qaeda in Ramadi has been
making between $400,000 and $600,000 every month to
fund their operations against U.S. forces -- Jim.
CLANCY: On another front, statistics that tell a
tragic story of what's happening in Baghdad and
elsewhere across the country, and that is the
appalling numbers of those people who have been
killed in sectarian violence.
WARE: That's right. And, I mean, this is precisely
what Al Qaeda in Iraq's founder, Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, wanted.
He spelled it out way in the beginning. And we first
saw it in an intercepted letter between him and Osama
bin Laden.
He says, "We must provoke the Shia, keep taunting
them until they rise up. Only then will we awake the
sleeping giant, the Sunni world. And then the great
conflict can begin."
He believed this was the way forward. This is the
result of his handiwork.
On the other extreme, you see Iranian-backed Shia
extremists and death squads playing their part. So
this is both ends of the extreme pulling the middle
apart and polarizing this country -- Jim.
CLANCY: Michael Ware. A look at the facts as they
appear tonight from the streets of Baghdad.
Michael, thank you.