Word: qaeda
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...bombs known as IEDs - the No. 1 cause of U.S. troop casualties. I remember the relish he took in listing his clients, most of them Iraqi Sunni insurgent groups, whom he saw as fellow patriots trying to drive out the American occupier. He had also devised triggers for al-Qaeda. "They pay me," he said then with a shrug. "Anybody who wants to kill American soldiers, if they pay me, I work for them...
...Iraq (SOI), one of nearly 100,000 Sunnis recruited by the U.S. military to fight al-Qaeda. Saif Abdallah (not his real name) is paid about $300 a month, and works with a group of 20 others somewhere north of Baghdad. His job? "Some patrols, some checkpoints," he says with a familiar shrug. "The work is not hard." (See pictures of five years of U.S. troops in Iraq...
...city dweller, got a tribal sheik to speak on his behalf. He hints that some money changed hands. "Everything is possible with dollars," he says with a laugh. He claims that at least five of the men in his SOI group had been foot soldiers for al-Qaeda. The U.S. soldiers with whom they have regular contact "don't know anything about us," he said...
These days, Odierno and his staff are brainstorming over what the next phase of U.S. military presence in Iraq will look like. A tough battle is still being fought in Mosul and Diyala province against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Iran continues to wage a hot and cold war for influence over the future of Iraq. Militant groups are trying to regain footholds around Baghdad. And Odierno's political skills have been put to the test in negotiations over a status-of-forces agreement with the Iraqi government, which the Iraqi Cabinet endorsed on Nov. 16. Under the terms...
Despite all this, whether bin Laden is alive or dead is actually pretty irrelevant. President-elect Barack Obama has no real choice but to revitalize the search for him, if only for political considerations. If al-Qaeda were to attack in the U.S. in the first months of his term, Obama would end up explaining why he wasn't more vigilant for the rest...