The Corner

Subject: Flypaper Strategy

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I can’t find Derb’s email easily enough to send this to him, but regarding your discussion w/ him on the flypaper strategy, you might be interested in this Sept. 2003 article by … Andrew Sullivan where he discusses the flypaper strategy and describes a pre-war conversation with someone close to the Bush administration who outlined it.

ME: I don’t doubt that such a conversation took place, but I wouldn’t put much stock in it. I doubt very much it was a war aim of ours to foment a vicious terrorist insurgency in Iraq so we could kill more militants. No one has ever mentioned such a thing to me before or after the invasion, and there are very few signs that we were expecting an insurgency, let alone hoping for one.

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