There at the Baghdad hospital, I joined an FBI agent in questioning the bedridden Ahmed al-Ani about his time in the Czech Republic. A diminutive man with a grizzled face creased by bouts of pain, he epitomized the type of drab regime functionary I’d come to know in Iraq all too well. Al-Ani had never met the 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta or even heard of him until he saw news reports after September 11. It is a cruel irony that this Iraqi man was first used as a prop for an American invasion and then subjected to disfiguring violence by soldiers who had carried out that invasion. But his story weighs on me in other ways.
