The War Within (50 page)

"Do you want to talk about Iraq?" she asked.

All indicated that they did. Violence was at a peak, Iraq as much a mess as ever. Already, 3,562 U.S. servicemen and women had died.

Rice urged them to speak openly and honestly. It was as if someone had pushed a button to release pressures and tensions that had accumulated for years.

"The senior people kind of let loose," recalled a participant and a Rice ally within the department. "They were concerned about the strategy. Would it work? Could it work? What is the long-lasting impact of the Iraq War on the U.S. position in the world? In the region? Domestically, the impact on the United States? Rice didn't say much, but it was a very dreary moment because they were all saying, 'We don't know where we're going and we don't know what this is, and we don't know the surge strategy can work.'" Other participants confirmed how pessimistic the discussion of Iraq had been.

Rice, true to form, chose to focus on the sliver of optimism she heard. She later recalled, "Three or four assistant secretaries said, 'Not only can we not lose, we can't be perceived to lose.'" A loss in Iraq would have a devastating impact on American leadership, they had argued. So they had to win. No one was arguing for outright withdrawal.

But a majority left the conference deeply disheartened. The Bush administration's new strategy of sending more U.S.

troops to protect the population had shown few signs of working.

* * *

On June 29, Bush met with the Republican leaders from the Senate and House.

"Mr. President," said Representative Roy Blunt, the Missouri Republican and the party's number two House leader,

"you have no credibility on communicating about Iraq."

"I know," Bush replied.

"The worst thing you could do is talk about Iraq," Blunt said.

"People believe I've been too optimistic for too long," Bush conceded.

Blunt remarked that in four years, the Iraqi people had not taken the opportunity to set up a functioning democracy.

"No one in the country has much concern for Jeffersonian democracy."

"I understand people feel that way," Bush replied, "but I disagree." He believed democracy was the only way, and he held high expectations for the surge.

* * *

Several times the president asked Petraeus, "Are we taking the fight to the enemy?" or "Are we on offense?" And on a number of occasions, he asked about enemy casualties, saying, "Well, and how many did we kill?"

Petraeus gave him numbers only every few weeks. "Mr. President," he said, "we are not going to kill our way out of Iraq. This is not about exchange ratios" of enemy killed versus U.S. killed. But, he acknowledged, "We have totaled up, and the exchange ratios are enormous." The coalition was killing dozens of enemy fighters for each American loss.

* * *

General Casey went for a routine physical inside the sprawling grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in northwest Washington. He spotted retired General Jack Keane standing in line at the radiology desk.

The two generals locked eyes for a moment, then Keane turned away, as if he hadn't recognized Casey.

"Hi Jack, how are you?" Casey said, extending his hand. He had been waiting for a moment like this. "Has the chairman called you yet?"

"No, why?" Keane asked.

"Because we feelóthe chiefs feelóthat you are way too out in front advocating a policy for which you're not accountable. We're accountable. You're not accountable, Jack. And that's a problem."

Keane said he'd taken action as a member of the secretary of defense's policy board, whose members were supposed to offer their independent advice. All he was trying to do was help Petraeus, he said. He had supported the Rumsfeld- Casey strategy for three years. "And at some point, I no longer could support it. I'm not operating as some kind of Lone Ranger."

"It's not appropriate for a retired general to be so far forward advocating a policy that he is not responsible or accountable for," Casey said again.

"I'll take your counsel," said Keane, but he didn't suggest he would act any differently.

* * *

On the Fourth of July, Pelosi invited a group of wounded veterans to watch the celebration from her offices in the Capitol. Her balcony provided a sweeping view of the Mall and the evening fireworks display.

One young Marine officer had no legs, just a torso sitting in a wheelchair.

"Madam Speaker," he said, straining up out of his wheelchair and pointing to where presidents take the oath of office. "I was there at the president's inauguration in '05. And I sang. And I stood there as part of the Naval Academy choir."

He had heard the president give one of the most ambitious inaugural addresses in history. "It is the policy of the United States," Bush had said that day, "to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

"How are
you
?" Pelosi asked the Marine.

"I've had some very dark days," said the young lieutenant, who'd survived a roadside bomb and was recovering at Walter Reed after numerous surgeries. "I'm trying to come around. I've had very dark months."

* * *

Petraeus tried to find a few minutes to read each night before he fell asleep. Little by little, he made his way through
Grant Takes Command,
by Bruce Catton, about General Ulysses S. Grant's campaigns to turn the tide for President Lincoln in the Civil War. Petraeus was particularly struck by how Grant handled setbacks. After the bloody first day of battle at Shiloh, General Sherman found Grant well past midnight, standing alone under a tree in heavy rain.

"Well, Grant," Sherman said, "we had the devil's own day, haven't we?"

"Yes," said Grant, his cigar glowing in the darkness as he gave a quick, hard puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

Among Petraeus's inner circle, "lick 'em tomorrow, though" became a rallying cry after many bad days, including one in which 160 Iraqis were killed by car bombs. Petraeus was astounded by the way Grant had taken one pounding after another from General Robert E. Lee, who stubbornly refused to be outflanked. Grant wrote, "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." This became another rallying cry.

"You don't think you're Grant?" a friend asked Petraeus.

"No," Petraeus said. He was also reading about General Matthew Ridgway, who had helped turn the tide of the Korean War.

* * *

In the spring of 2007, my assistant, Brady Dennis, and I tracked down notes of key interviews conducted by the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. Included was CIA Director Michael Hayden's bleak assessment of the Maliki government. Hayden had said that "the inability of the government to govern seems irreversible," adding that he could not "point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around." A majority of the study group members said that Hayden's assessment was the chief reason they began their report with the line "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating."

I took this information to Len Downie, the executive editor of
The Washington Post.
Even months after Hayden's testimony to the group, I said, his dire assessment constituted news and should be published as soon as possible.

Downie agreed. Because the material had been gathered on the condition that it was for a book that would come out the next year, Downie and I met with one of the sources and asked that the ground rules be changed. Downie said he felt it would be a "dereliction of duty" on the part of the
Post
if this information were not made public soon. The source initially refused but eventually acknowledged that because Hayden's assessment was the most important and most authoritative the study group had received, it deserved to be published.

I contacted several CIA officials to ask whether Hayden would speak with me about his statements and whether his assessment had changed. Hayden declined, and he called Lee Hamilton, the Democratic co-chairman of the study group, to complain. According to Hamilton, Hayden said, "Woodward knows an awful lot about this testimony. I presented the dark side, and Woodward is going to make it darker."

The
Post
story ran Thursday, July 12, under the headline "CIA Said Instability Seemed 'Irreversible.'"

That same day, the president was asked about the story at a news conference.

"Mike Hayden was in this morning to give me his weekly briefing," Bush said, "and I asked him about that newspaper article from which you quote. His answer was his comments to the Iraq Study Group were a little more nuanced than the quotation you read." According to Bush, Hayden's recollection of his statement to the study group was that in November 2006 "the current strategy in Iraq wasn't workingÖand that we needed a change of direction."

The president used what he said were Hayden's recollections to bolster his decision to change the strategy. Then he went further than he ever had in public: "As I told you last November, right about this time, I was part of that group of Americans who didn't approve of what was taking place in Iraq because it looked like all the efforts that we had taken to that point in time were about to fail."

It was as if Bush had been a bystander, just an ordinary American who objected to the course of the war.

Chapter 37

K
eane made another two-week trip to Iraq in July. Petraeus, other military generals and the CIA station chief told him the Sunni insurgency was collapsing. Thousands of former Sunni insurgents were cooperating with the U.S. and other coalition forces. Some 21,000 Sunnis in Anbar province alone had joined up, and Prime Minister Maliki had authorized 18,000 former insurgents to bear arms and be paid. Keane attended a classified conference that Petraeus had with his subordinate commanders. Then the two went off alone.

Petraeus told Keane that what was mostly on his mind was the September testimony to Congress. There was a lot of good news to report, but Petraeus said he was going to be careful not to overstate the successes. That had been a problem in this war from the beginning.

"You have to be factual, credible," Keane advised, "but also be hopeful. Don't be afraid to be hopeful. Try to find a way to be factual, but also to reveal who you are. Because at the end of the day, the congressmen and senators are nuts, but your audience is the American people who are out there watching. Realize it's television and the power of television. When you're talking with them, you've got to establish a relationship with them, and to do that they've got to see a bit of you. They've got to feel you a little bit, you know, who you are. And let them see it."

* * *

On Saturday, August 18, Keane gave Cheney a private briefing at the vice president's residence off Massachusetts Avenue in northwest Washington. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had advised Keane that when he saw the president or vice president, "Don't leave anything on the tableÖ. Get it all out and you'll feel so much better for it."

With Petraeus scheduled to testify the next month, Keane told Cheney, "I don't see any evidence that the administration, the Department of Defense and the Department of State, is really setting up the conditions for this testimony to be successful."

"What do you mean by that?" Cheney asked.

"The secretary of defense has enormous credibility," Keane said. Gates had been on the Iraq Study Group, and he had been unanimously confirmed by the Senate. "He should be willing to support his field commander with key leaders in the Senate and the House prior to the testimony, setting up the conditions." Keane said Petraeus was getting no help from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the chiefs themselves, Central Commander Admiral Fallon or Fallon's staff. Genuine support was coming only from the president and vice president. That was important, but the others should pitch in.

Keane had particular trouble with Fallon. "I'm the first guy that raised Fallon's name," he told Cheney, but Fallon was constantly putting pressure on Petraeus. "Making him do all sorts of analyses to get out sooner or have a deeper withdrawal." He referred to the report that Admiral Winnefeld had issued after Fallon had sent him to assess the situation in Iraq. It had undermined Petraeus. "What happened to Fallon, he bought into all the political concerns in WashingtonÖI understand that to a certain degree. But as opposed to coming in here and strengthening the Joint Chiefs' resolve, his own resolve was weakened by the views in Washington and the Joint Chiefs. And he took that and turned it against Petraeus."

Since Petraeus had arrived in Iraq, Keane said, "The Joint Chiefs are more concerned about breaking the Army and Marine Corps than winning the war. They don't say it that way," but that's the way it comes across to Petraeus. "The fact that the Army is stressed and strained is sort of expected during war. That's why it exists." If we happen to break it fighting a war we feel we must win, he said, then so be it. That has happened in past wars.

Cheney's trademark silence invited more.

"Secretary Rice," Keane said, "I'll just speak frankly. She goes around the world dealing with foreign policy issues, but where she stands on Iraq, I'm not sure. And I don't think she's willing to damage her reputation at all over this issue." She should be helping Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who was going to appear before Congress with Petraeus.

Keane tried to explain why this lack of support had such an impact on Petraeus. "Normally, a military commander who is succeeding, it obviously means you are producing results, and it obviously means you are helping the chain of command above you. They're very proud of you. It certainly enhances the organization they're responsible for. When you're succeeding, you've always had a very supportive chain of command."

The irony, Keane said, was that Petraeus had obtained a four-star combat command "in a campaign of war, and dealing with something that is clearly in the national interest, and the stakes are very highÖand at that point he has an unsupportive chain of command for the first time in his career when he has the most critical job he's ever had and ever will have. The impact of that is stunning for him."