The War Within (12 page)

Rumsfeld made it clear he was not happy with the session. Likewise, Casey left feeling it was an affrontóHadley's birthday present wrapped in 50 demeaning questions.

O'Sullivan prepared a SECRET summary of the July 22 discussion that was circulated to Hadley, Rumsfeld, Pace, Abizaid, Casey and Khalilzad. It began, "Overarching strategic question: What has changed about the situation in Iraq, and do these changes warrant alterations in our military and political strategies?"

It was an argumentative question, but she and Hadley had effectively sparked a strategy debate.

Hadley briefed the president about the results. The most pressing problem was that they didn't have a plan for securing Baghdad, where bodies were turning up each morning by the dozens.

* * *

In secure videoconferences during this period, the president asked whose job it was to bring security to Baghdad.

Maliki would say Casey. Casey would say Maliki.

Asked later if this was accurate, Bush told me, "True," but added, "My mind works this way: If the responsibility is muddled, let's clear it. Ideally, the Iraqis would be in the lead. And, you know, Maliki wanted to be in the lead. And Casey wanted Maliki to be in the lead. We all wanted Maliki to be in the lead, but the problem was the strategy wasn't working. He wasn't ready to be in the lead. And [the goal] was clear, hold and build, except [the reality] was clear, and no build and no hold."

Bush said this showed "that the tactics are flawed, and we need to adjust. And that's what Steve's policy review was doing."

* * *

Rumsfeld had said over and over again that the United States needed to get its "hand off the Iraqi bicycle seat."

Hadley told Rice and several others that he had come to disdain Rumsfeld's bicycle metaphor, in part because it triggered an unpleasant but relevant personal memory. In Hadley's telling, during the early 1950s, when he was in kindergarten in Toledo, Ohio, his father decided to teach him to ride a bike. Dutifully holding the bicycle seat, the father got his son going down the street at a fast clip.

"Great job!" his father yelled, as the young Hadley, wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, pumped away at the pedals. But as his father's voice grew more distant, the boy realized he was on his own. He turned to look back and spilled right over, tearing up his knees and elbows. It would be two and a half years before he got back on a bicycle.

Now, when Rumsfeld said it was time to take the hand off the Iraqi bicycle seat, Hadley thought, "Well, there are costs and consequences of taking the hand off the bicycle if the lad falls over."

Chapter 8

W
ith the midterm congressional elections three months off, the Democrats stepped up their criticism of the war. A dozen top congressional Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, sent a letter to the president on July 30. "Far from implementing a comprehensive 'Strategy for Victory'

as you promised months ago, your administration's strategy appears to be one of trying to avoid defeat," it read.

"Meanwhile, U.S. troops and taxpayers continue to pay a high price as your Administration searches for a policy."

It concluded, "Mr. President, simply staying the course in Iraq is not working. We need to take a new direction."

They did not know that the president had reached the same conclusion, though he wasn't about to say so publicly.

* * *

On August 1, a roadside bomb detonated under a bus filled with Iraqi soldiers in northern Iraq, killing 23 and wounding 40. The next day, a suicide bomber killed 13 and wounded 26 in a well-to-do area of Baghdad, and two bombs placed in gym bags near a soccer field in a Shia area in west Baghdad exploded, killing 12 and wounding 14.

Most of these victims were children. That was only a sampling of the extent and variety of the grisly slaughter.

In Steve Hadley's "GWB" file of pressing matters for the president's attention, the classified summary showed 150

attacks a day in Iraq, six an hour. The attacks included assaults on Iraqi facilities, bombs, IEDs, mines, sniper fire, ambushes, grenade and small arms, mortar, rocket and even surface-to-air fire.

DIA analyst Derek Harvey circulated a classified paper in August based on the latest intelligence. He forecast the inevitable fracturing of the country if the administration remained on the same course. The Iraqi government was failing; it had no chance of overcoming the violent Shia-Sunni hostilities. The Iraqi security forces had not changed or adjusted. The U.S. "catch-and-release" policy on insurgents who were picked up and detained was feeding them back into the population rather than removing them as a threat.

Harvey's paper soon acquired a nickname: "The Doomsday Paper."

* * *

The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group continued its work behind closed doors. On Wednesday, August 2, members gathered in an ornate meeting room on Capitol Hill. Their first session was with a dejected Senate Republican leadershipóBill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the number two. "It is pretty obvious," Frist said, "that hopes are falling in Iraq. There will be a real hard time unless things start to turn. A lot of big ifs have to go right to get to a safe and prosperous Iraq." McConnell said that Iraq needed at least reasonable stability. Referring to one of the largest, most notorious, authoritarian and repressive regimes in the Middle East, he said, "I'd settle for Egypt."

Nearly everyone laughed.

The next meeting was with the leadership of the Senate Armed Services CommitteeóVirginia Republican John Warner and Michigan Democrat Carl Levin. Levin, who would become committee chairman if the Democrats won control of the Senate, said that the Iraqis "think they have a security blanket. The bottom line is that right now patience is the watch word. The watch word should be that we're impatient. We're
damn
impatient."

Study group member Charles Robb thought that since the United States had invaded Iraq, it had a moral obligation to stay until the Iraqis could restore order.

A conservative, hard-line, promilitary Democrat, Robb had been a young Marine captain during the mid-1960s when he was assigned as a military social aide to the White House. There, he met President Johnson's daughter Lynda Bird, and the two married at the White House on December 9, 1967. Robb went on to serve two tours in Vietnam, winning a Bronze Star as commander of a combat rifle company.

Robb had been pushing the idea of adding more troops on a temporary basis to stabilize Baghdad. "We have far too much skin in the game to just walk away on a fixed timetable," he argued. None of the other members seemed to agree.

Still active in Marine Corps matters, Robb knew General Pace and was proud that a Marine was finally chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So he floated his idea of adding forces to Pace. Was it possible? Was the military capable?

In several conversations, Pace responded positively. But when the two exchanged e-mails, Pace seemed hesitant.

Robb was the only senator to serve simultaneously on all three national security committeesóintelligence, armed services and foreign relations. During the session with Senators Warner and Levin, he inquired about a possible escalation, calling it a "surge," according to notes of the meeting. He picked the word out of the air because it reflected his view of a sudden increase that would eventually decrease. Was a "surge" possible?

Yes, said Senator Warner.

No, said Senator Levin.

But Robb had put the idea on the radar screen. As he said later, "Every river starts somewhere."

Lee Hamilton asked his favorite question: What should be the definition of success in Iraq?

"I would drop the word victory," Warner said. "Success is a stable Iraq that can take the reins of sovereignty."

Levin said, "Iraq will not have a democracy. The goal should be stability. But democracy should be mentioned."

Alan Simpson chimed in. "People are fed up with this war. Republicans are going to pay a huge price for this war in November. I think we're going to lose the election in November because of this war."

* * *

The study group members headed to the U.S. Institute of Peace in downtown Washington to meet with the commander of U.S. Central Command, General Abizaid, who appeared in uniform and handed out a PowerPoint presentation.

Here was the combatant commander responsible for Iraq before the group that was supposed to study the Iraq War, but Abizaid, as usual, talked about the entire region of his commandóthe Middle East, East Africa and Central Asia.

He mentioned the problems of Pakistan with nuclear weapons and Saudi Arabia with its oil. He mentioned Sunni extremism in the Horn of Africa and the Shia revolutionary movement in Iran.

On intelligence, Abizaid said, "CentCom and CIA aim to be seamless on targeting data." Referring to human intelligence sources, he said, "Our HUMINT is at about 30 percent of what it should be, up about 10 percent from a few years ago. Now we get information from the Saudis based on a raid, it goes to the CIA, and the CIA gets us a target to hit in Iraq."

"What is the problem in Baghdad?" asked Panetta.

"To move a car bomb is not a problem," Abizaid said, "even with increased troops. The death squads have to be targeted. The insurgency has to be controlled. Both sides want civil waróal Qaeda because it serves Sunni extremism, the Shia militias because it will serve Shia extremism."

The general said he was "optimistic" that the violence would diminish before the holiday of Ramadan the next month. "Violence cannot be the measure of success," he said. His argument was an old one: the enemyóinsurgents, al Qaeda or sectarian extremistsódecided to launch attacks, and if the measurement of success was the level of violence, then the enemy was in charge.

Would a drawdown of U.S. forces be a signal of impatience? Robb asked. Or did the United States need to send more troops?

"We are trying to work ourselves out of a job in Iraq," Abizaid said. "The Iraqis do not believe that we are leaving.

This is not a good dynamic, and it is the psychology of the region. We have to make clear to the Iraqis that 'It's your country. We'll help you to the extent possible, but it's your country.'"

What might be the sign of a tipping point in Iraq? Bob Gates asked.

"If the Iraq army dissolves," Abizaid replied, "if it becomes sectarian or quits serving the national government. Or if the Iranian government made a strategic decision to attack coalition forces and cause greater casualties. They might do that. You could end up with a Hezbollah-like situation in the south and a weak Iraq." Hezbollah is an Iranian-backed political and paramilitary extremist group based in Lebanon.

"We're putting a lot of chips on Maliki," Lee Hamilton remarked.

"We could lose Maliki," Abizaid said. "It would not, for instance, be as big a problem as if Karzai were to go"óa reference to Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan.

Afterward, several members remarked how little Abizaid had talked about, or even seemed focused on, Iraq.

* * *

The next day, August 3, Abizaid testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill. Senator Levin asked the general if he believed that Iraq was sliding toward civil war.

"I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular," he replied, "and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war."

His comments received prominent attention on that evening's national newscasts and landed the next morning on the front pages of
The New York Times
and
The Washington Post.

* * *

Hadley had kept Rice informed of his efforts to get an internal strategy review going, and she was familiar with the 50-question grilling that he had meted out to Khalilzad and Casey. It was increasingly obvious to Rice that they didn't have a strategy. She wanted to reevaluate the strategy herself. But to be quite frank, she said, she didn't want

"to do anything that would be above the radar screen in the heavy political breathing of the November elections."

The administration did not need what she called "a hothouse story" that acknowledged Iraq had gotten so bad that they were considering a new approach. That would play into the hands of critics and antiwar Democrats.

* * *

On Friday, August 4, Rice appeared on an MSNBC cable news show for an interview with NBC White House correspondent David Gregory.

"I believe that we've made progress," she said. "No, I do not believe that it's failing."

"But," Gregory asked, "is there not some discussion about what happens if this doesn't work, a plan B?"

"David," she replied, "what you want to do is settle on a plan and then press as hard as you can to make that plan work. And that's where everyone's energies are at this point, and I think this plan is going to work."

The problem was that her statements weren't true. Plenty of energy was going into finding a new and better plan.

The next morning, Saturday, Rice left Washington for a weekend at the president's Crawford ranch, arriving about 11:30 A.M. She had lunch with the president and Hadley.

They had been hoping the sectarian violence would burn itself out, but it kept getting worse. The intelligence reports showed large-scale displacement of residents in Baghdad. Whole neighborhoods were being attacked by militiasóboth Shia and Sunnióand bodies continued to pile up at the average of 50 a day, some days far more. The violence was worse than at any other time during the war. Baghdad's neighborhoods had become a patchwork of self-protective enclaves. Burnt-out cars and trucks, barriers and walls created virtual forts dotting the vast city.

Rice told the president that she was worried that the very fabric of Iraqi society was rending. She held her hands in front of her and pulled them apart dramatically. The Iraqis, she said, weren't going to have anything to build on if they kept going at each other this way. The core of Iraqi civil society was in jeopardy.

"I think we all knew that that was the problem," Rice recalled.