The War Within (39 page)

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Authors: Bob Woodward

Tags: #History: American, #U.S. President, #Executive Branch, #Political Science, #Politics and government, #Iraq War; 2003, #Iraq War (2003-), #Government, #21st Century, #(George Walker);, #2001-2009, #Current Events, #United States - 21st Century, #U.S. Federal Government, #Bush; George W., #Military, #History, #1946-, #Presidents & Heads of State, #Political History, #General, #Biography & Autobiography, #Politics, #Government - Executive Branch, #United States

BOOK: The War Within
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"I'm going to delay the speech until early January, ease up on the throttle," the president said. "We're going to empower Maliki to go into Sadr City right off. Is that the right priority? Would it be better to start with mixed neighborhoods? Especially if we want to surge, it may be a better way to get security in Baghdad than doing the hardest thing first." He didn't want the operation to look anti-Shia or anti-Sadr. It should be anticriminal and antiextremist.

"We never intended to go immediately into Sadr City," Casey said. "We need to feel Maliki out on this, but we need to strengthen the presence in the city peacefully and leverage the political elements in Sadr City first."

"We have to do something different," Bush said. "We have to demonstrate that we're doing something fundamentally different." And he reminded his general, "We've got to win." He posed the question: "Okay, what can you do that's fundamentally different?"

Casey said they could increase the number of troops. That would be different. But again, he was not recommending it.

"What else can you do?" the president asked.

Put in more money and perhaps increase the Provincial Reconstruction Teams made up of State Department officials and other civilians, Casey said. "But that's not going to be fundamentally different."

It was clear to Casey that the president had tuned him out. From his mind-set to his body language, Bush had changed in the month since the midterm elections. More to the point, Casey realized that he had lost a basic, necessary ingredient for a commanding general in wartime. He had lost the confidence of the president, a stunning and devastating realization.

At another point, Bush addressed General Abizaid. "Yeah, I know," the president said, "you're going to tell me you're against the surge."

Yes, Abizaid said, and presented his argument that they needed to get out of Iraq in order to win. But the president was not listening to Abizaid anymore, either.

"The U.S. presence helps to keep a lid on," Bush said toward the end of the session. "It buys time for the Maliki government and the Iraqi security forces. It gets the situation to a more manageable level in Baghdad." Troops added under a "bridge" or "surge" would "also help here at home, since for many the measure of success is reduction in violence. And it'll help Maliki to get control of the situation. A heavier presence will buy time for his government."

Someone said that the rest of Iraq wasn't as tenuous as Baghdad.

"But it's the capital city that looks chaotic," the president said. "And when your capital city looks chaotic, it's hard to sustain your position, whether at home or abroad." In closing, he said, "The speech won't be tomorrow. But let's use the time to work with Maliki."

* * *

General Abizaid was scheduled to leave his post as CentCom commander in about three months, March 2007, and Casey was planning to leave sometime in the months after that, later in the spring or summer.

"You're going to be leaving" sooner than scheduled, Abizaid warned Casey.

* * *

That night, December 12, Rice and Gates had dinner at the Watergate Hotel. It had been a decade and a half since they had worked together at the NSC for Bush senior.

"Bob," she said, "this doesn't work the way it did when we were here. It doesn't work that the president gets options from the Pentagon. What he gets is a fable, a story about what's going on," overconfident briefings that skirted the real problems. "They don't come in and let him deep-dive into what's really happening on the ground. And that's what he's hungry to do." The result, she said, was that "He doesn't have answers about how to fix this." And frankly, she said, the basic questions had not been answered for her. What was to be done? If they added force, what was the mission? What would two, five, even 10 brigades do that was different?

Gates said he'd be taking stock, talking to lots of people. And as soon as he was sworn in, his first priority would be to get to Iraq to see for himself.

Gates, who seemed a little shocked to find himself defense secretary, said he was already thinking about new generals who knew counterinsurgency. He planned to empower them.

Rice and Gates agreed that, as the heads of the two key departments, they had to level with each other, support each other, be totally honest and try to help turn the NSC into a functioning war council.

* * *

Bush and Hadley were more convinced than ever that they needed a surge. "How can we get a process that will cause the military to come to these conclusions?" Hadley asked. He was pushing for the kind of consensus that would allow him to say, "Mr. President, we're all on the same page. Some people less, but we're all on the same boat, heading the same direction."

* * *

General Pace was facing every JCS chairman's nightmareóa potential revolt of the other chiefs. The heads of the four services were increasingly frustrated. Their work with the Council of Colonels was being marginalized, and now, they suspected, their opinions were being ignored by the White House.

"Why isn't this getting any traction over there, Pete?" General Schoomaker, the Army chief, asked at one tank meeting. Was the president being briefed?

"I can only get part of it before him," Pace said, "and I'm not getting any feedback."

How much was the president seeing?

"It's really hard to get this before him," Pace said.

In several tank meetings, Admiral Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations for nearly 18 months, voiced concern that the politicians were going to find a way to place the blame for Iraq on the military. "They're orchestrating this to dump in our laps," Mullen said. The generals would wind up responsible for all the problems, and the military would take the fall. Mullen raised the point so many times that Schoomaker thought the Navy leader sounded "almost paranoid."

Schoomaker was outraged when he saw news coverage that Jack Keane, the former vice chief of the Army, had been to the White House to brief the president on the new Iraq strategy proposed by the American Enterprise Institute.

"When does AEI start trumping the Joint Chiefs of Staff on this stuff?" Schoomaker asked at a chiefs meeting.

Pace, normally given to concealing his opinions, let down the veil slightly and gave a little sigh. But he didn't answer.

"Do you realize how serious this is?" Schoomaker asked. He thought Pace was too much of a gentleman to be effective in a business where forcefulness and a willingness to get in people's faces were survival skills. "They weren't listening to what Pete [Pace] was saying," Schoomaker said later in private. "Or Pete wasn't carrying the mail, or he was carrying it incompletely." Under the law, the chairman was the principal military adviser to the president. But the service chiefs, also advisers, could take the extraordinary step of communicating their views to the president themselves.

The chiefs' frustration level got so high that Pace told Bush, "You need to sit down with them, Mr. President, and hear from them directly."

Hadley saw this as an opportunity. He arranged for Bush and Cheney to go to the tank on December 13. The president would come armed with what Hadley called "sweeteners"ómore budget money and a promise to increase the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps. It also was a symbolic visit, important to the chiefs because the president would be on their territory. Rumsfeld had rarely met with them in the tank in recent years, but now he and Gates were in attendance.

The president, Cheney and Hadley took the short ride across the Potomac River in the presidential limousine. The vice president suggested orchestrating a series of questions that would make it clear that the U.S. military wasn't on top of the security situation in Iraq and that the Iraqis were even less on top of it. None of the chiefs could disagree with that.

"Mr. President, if you'd like," Cheney said, "I'd be happy to ask probing questions at the outset."

"Sure," Bush said, "Go right ahead."

As they gathered in the tank, Cheney asked the chiefs: Do we want to bet the farm by dumping it all on the Iraqis now, particularly in Baghdad? And do we want to make that big bet without knowing that the Maliki government can be nonsectarian and function?

The chiefs suggested that the president test the Iraqis. Make them prove they can reconcile, and only then make the bet of adding more force.

Cheney recognized the argument. It was one the Democrats, as well as Rumsfeld and Casey, had been making: Force the Iraqis to step up. But he felt they weren't yet capable.

Cheney could see that the president was not about to move off course. He knew where he wanted to go.

"You can't ask them to reconcile in this security situation," the president said. "Don't we have to make our bet to get the security situation in hand before, in some sense, it's fair to put them to the test?"

As they went around the table, the chiefs made three points: The Iraqis would have to execute a security plan in a nonsectarian way; Maliki needed an Iraqi army commander who would have unfettered authority to go anywhere, even Sadr City, where Maliki was blocking operations; and there could be no more safe havens for al Qaeda.

"All right," the president said. He would get those commitments from Maliki.

Several concerns were raised about Maliki himself. Even if he wasn't controlled by Iran, was he too close to the Iranians?

The president said he was totally behind Maliki.

"Mr. President," Schoomaker began, turning to the real issueóa proposed surge of five brigades. "You know that five brigades is really 15." Schoomaker was in charge of generating the force for the Army. To send five additional brigades to Iraq, they would need to accelerate the deployment of those five. Another five would have to take their place in line, and if the surge were to be sustained, it would take yet another five. This could not be done without calling up more National Guard and Reserves units or extending the 12-month tours in Iraq. The Army, he said, had hoped to go the other direction and cut tours to nine months. Just to level with you, Mr. President, Schoomaker said, the force is not available without a radical change to the Army's 12-month rotation policy or to how it utilizes the Reserves. Besides, he asked, would a surge really bring violence down? Would it transform the situation? If not, he asked, why do it? "I don't think that you have the time to surge and generate enough forces for this thing to continue to go," Schoomaker said.

"Pete, I'm the president," Bush said. "And I've got the time."

"Fine, Mr. President," Schoomaker said. "You're the president."

Several of the chiefs noted that the five brigades were effectively the strategic reserve of the United States military, the forces on hand in case of flare-ups elsewhere in the world. There was no telling what new crisis might occur that would require sizable ground forces. It had happened before. Surprise was a way of international life. Should the strategic reserve of the United States be committed, leaving the last superpower unprepared for a big crisis? The president had always made the point that it was a dangerous world. Did he want to leave the United States in the position of not being able to deal with the next manifestation of that danger?

The president disagreed, saying, "I'm not worried about a North Korean invasion of South Korea at this point. That's a potential hypothetical, might someday happen. We've got a war on our hands and we've got to win the war we've got."

But would the rest of the government step up, the chiefs asked. They worried that the civilians wouldn't do their part.

The president said he would ensure that they would and that the State Department's Provincial Reconstruction Teams would be expanded.

Bush turned again to Schoomaker. "Pete, you don't agree with me, do you?"

"No, I don't agree with you," Schoomaker said. "I just don't see it. I just don't. But I know right now that it's going to be 15 brigades. And how we're going to get those 15 brigades, I don't know. This is going to require more than we can generate. You're stressing the force, Mr. President, and these kids just see deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan for the indefinite future."

"We have to send a signal," Bush said, promising to make requests to Congress to expand both the Army and the Marine Corps.

Gates had said nothing during the meeting.

* * *

Bush and the chiefs met with reporters at 2:45 P.M. They revealed no details of their discussion, though the president said, "The enemy has also suffered. Offensive operations by Iraqi and coalition forces against terrorists and insurgents and death squad leaders have yielded positive results." If no one else would give the body count, he would. "In the months of October, November and the first week of December, we have killed or captured nearly 5,900 of the enemy." He said he had been on a secure videoconference with General Casey the previous day, discussing all that was being done "to defeat these enemies."

Of course, Casey had also presented his arguments against the surge. In the face of what should have been a serious analysis of strategy, the president's insistence on publicly reporting the 5,900 "killed or captured"óa useless statisticówas additional proof for Casey that the president did not understand the war.

Schoomaker never shook his fear that a surge would be a ticking time bomb for Army policy. He and the other chiefs left unsatisfied, but at least they had had their say. Rejected advice was not grounds for a revolt.

"The chiefs and I had reservations," Pace later reported to Hadley. "They have been addressed in the new strategy, and I am now comfortable with the new strategy."

Hadley was delighted.

Cheney thought it had been quite effective. Bush hadn't summoned the chiefs to the Oval Office, sat them down, chewed them out and said, "I'm damn unhappy. This isn't working. I want a change. I want a new strategy." Instead, he had heard them out and then made clear that he was going to do what he wanted to do.

"The tank meeting was a very important meeting," Bush told me later in an interview. "In my own mind, I'm sure I didn't want to walk in with my mind made up and not give these military leaders the benefit of a discussion about a big decision." He said that if he were just pretending to be open-minded, "you get sniffed out. And there'd be nothing worse than the president getting ready to make a decision relative to the military and these commanders, these Joint Chiefs and all the other people in the room who are watching like a hawk, not think that I was genuinely interested.

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