Vice President Dick “Cheney won one more small victory in the twilight days of the Bush presidency when [on October 26, 2008] two dozen Special Forces soldiers in Black Hawk helicopters swooped into Syria six miles across the Iraqi border and killed an al-Qaeda leader named Abu Ghadiya, leader of the network that smuggled foreign fighters into Iraq. Cheney had been pressing for months for someone to go after him, only to be told the intelligence was not definitive enough. For a while, the agencies were not even sure of his name and had no pictures. Then finally a raid on an al-Qaeda hideout captured files proving the connection. For Cheney, it was one small validation in a period of repudiation. He was, said one aide, ‘quite pleased.’ ”
– Peter Baker, Days of Fire, Page 618