The War Within

by Woodward, Bob

  "We have to fight off the impression that this is not winnable," the president said. Support for the war had plummeted. In a recent Gallup poll, 56 percent of Americans said the war was a mistake, as 41 percent said it was not. Bush's approval ratings hovered at about 37 percent.

  "Can America succeed?" he asked, one of the few times he seemed to entertain the possibility that it might not. "If so, how? How do our commanders answer that?"

  General Abizaid had joined the meeting through the secure video link, as had General Casey. Before they could answer, the president recounted his conversation with a widow of a soldier. The woman had said, according to the president, "Look, I trust you. But can you win?"

  Then the president recited his goalsóa free society that could defend, sustain and govern itself while becoming a reliable ally in the global war on terrorism. Then he added a dreary assessment, saying, "It seems Iraq is incapable of achieving that."

  "The region is in a sour mood," General Abizaid said. "It seems like it's hitting an unseen tipping point." He said they needed to focus on and assist moderates such as Prime Minister Maliki, while always driving toward turning responsibility over to them. This was the theme Rumsfeld, Casey and he were still pushing. It was necessary to get the hand off the back of the bicycle seat, to take the training wheels off the Iraqi government.

  Abizaid said he saw three big regional problemsóconflict between the Muslim sects, the Shia and the Sunnis; the Israeli-Palestinian disputes; and the general undercurrents of extremism. Many others in the region were in the fightóthe Pakistanis, the Afghans and the Iraqis. "The way we're focusing on this problem is too military. We need to help them help themselves." The political and economic elements needed more resources and attention. "We need to think about how to get a different message out," he said. The president was interested in a new message. Abizaid seemed to be missing the point the president was making: They had to consider a more fundamental change. Bush urged Abizaid to write his ideas and give them to Rumsfeld. The secretary reiterated his theme: "Help them help themselves."

  "Senators," Bush said, "are now hearing intelligence briefings about the fact that Iraq is now in a civil war"óan idea that he had dismissed. "This is an important moment, and people are also looking at how things are going in Baghdad."

  "We need a defining speech," said Khalilzad. It was another mind-bending moment. Bush had given dozens of speeches and public presentations on Iraq, many intended to be "defining." Like Abizaid, Khalilzad failed to recognize that the change the president was talking about meant more than rhetoric.

  "We need to show how we deny a safe haven for terror," Casey said. That was one presumed accomplishment: Iraqis were not exporting terror to other countries. Terrorism was being imported into Iraq. "The plan is not unfolding fast enough for some people," Casey said. "Enduring success will only be achieved by Iraqis." The new Iraqi government of Prime Minister Maliki, in office less than four months, was still finding its legs. "It's moving forward at a better pace than the last government," Casey said. "There's steady progress, but it needs another four to six months. It's too soon to tell if the government will turn out good or bad."

  Casey's forces were going to try to decrease the violence in Baghdad between then and Ramadan, the Muslim holiday barely a month away. Casey said they would try to increase local neighborhood efforts everywhere and try to transition Baghdad to the local security forces. Of the announced strategy of "clear, hold and build," he said,

  "Clearing is the easiest part. It is harder to hold. We're doing a transition of control to the Iraqi government in the provinces."

  On the Iraqi security forcesóarmy and policeóBush asked, "Is there a way to quantify how good they are?"

  "The Iraqi army is in the fight. We're doing well," Casey answered, dodging half the question. He believed that the president still saw Iraq in terms of measuring how much damage was being inflicted on the enemy. Bush always asked about offensive operations. So Casey threw the commander in chief a bone. "We're killing 300 to 350

  insurgents a month."

  "We don't want to make this a body count," injected General Pete Pace. Pace hated body counts, the clear echoes of Vietnam; he knew it was a false measure, and that using numbers as a metric of success could be seen by the troops as encouragement to kill more. Because the mission in Iraq was to get out of the country, killing more did not necessarily help. But Pace submitted to the president's intent. "We've gotten thousands," he said.

  Bush stated that the numbers were just for his personal comfort level, but for Casey it was another sign the president did not get it.

  Casey and others knew three wars were raging in Iraq. First, there was the battle with the Sunni insurgency, including those from Saddam's Baath Party. Second, there was a fierce conflict with the terrorist al Qaeda network that had sprung up inside Iraq only after the invasion. Third, there was an increasingly violent sectarian war between the Sunni minority and the Shia majority.

  "Ninety percent of the sectarian violence is within 30 miles of the center of Baghdad," Khalilzad said. "We need to get the different forces in Iraq to come together." He ran through the political prioritiesóequal distribution of oil and gas revenue, letting more of the lower-ranking former Baathists into the government, and curbing the role of the local militias, which were increasingly sectarian and violent. Another headache was the Ministry of Interior, which oversaw the sectarian and corrupt national police, and which needed drastic overhaul and reform.

  "Folks are not in a compromising mood," Casey said. "We have to force action in this timeline." Two months earlier, in June, he had presented his SECRET three-phase timeline that would lead to Iraqi self-reliance in 2009.

  Bush turned to the thorny problem of the Iraqi police and reminded General Casey somewhat sarcastically that the general had said 2006 would be "The Year of the Police." So, the president inquired, how's that going?

  "We're doing a good job of building them up," Casey answered. "It will be completed in 2006." A new program to pull the police off-line for inspection and training was under way and would be complete by year's end. He was moving forward with an effort to bring American soldiers into Baghdad police stations.

  Rumsfeld asked if there was anything that could be done to better advise Prime Minister Maliki to develop a plan, show if it were on track, and force dates for action.

  "This is a critical issue," Khalilzad replied, "but it is hard to threaten the Iraqi government." The United States had little leverage. This flew in the face of the simple fact that the United States occupied the country. "You can only just drink tea with them," Khalilzad said, referring to his endless sessions with Iraqis that produced meager results.

  The focus turned to Bush's statement that they needed a plan with concrete, measurable steps, rather than abstract goals.

  Philip Zelikow, the State Department counselor who was sitting in for Rice, said there were four important conditions that were favorable for the coalition. The enemy was unpopular with the Iraqi people; the Iraqi government was getting better; the United States was growing more experienced; and most of the violence was not aimed at overthrowing the government.

  Turning back to Baghdad, the president said, "It looks pretty bad."

  "There's really a difference of views on the threat," Khalilzad said. The Shia majority, which controlled the government, wanted to go after al Qaeda and the Baathists. "To them, the Shia death squads are defensive. All their enemies are Baathists. On the Sunni side, the real problems are Shia militias and Iran," which was supporting the militias.

  "How are we doing on al Qaeda?" Bush asked. "Do we have enough manpower to do Baghdad and keep taking on al Qaeda and the Baathists?"

  "We have an effort against al Qaeda that is keeping a steady operational tempo," Casey answered.

  "Lots of people being picked up," Rumsfeld said. "Lots of people being interrogated."

  "Just uncovered a big car bomb network in Baghdad," Casey added. "We don't ne
ed more troops to do that. In Baghdad, we have enough for right now." He had just doubled the number of U.S. forces in Baghdad from about 7,000 to 14,000. The Iraqis would have to "hold" the areas that had been cleared, the general said, but he said he wasn't sure the Iraqis could deliver.

  Bush had always maintained that he had to let the generals run the war. The problem during the Vietnam War, he told me in 2002, was that "the government micromanaged the war"óboth the White House and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. During Vietnam, Bush had been a Texas Air National Guard F-102 pilot, though he had never served in combat. "I remember my pilot friends," he said, "telling me that over Thud Ridge"óthe path American jets took to Hanoió"they could only fly a certain time, and the enemy knew when they were coming."

  Micromanaging the war from the White House had been a red line for Bush. The generals' words almost always were unchallenged gospel. He did not want to second-guess them. He would regularly ask if they had everything they needed.

  All that was about to change.

  "We must succeed," Bush said. "We will commit the resources to succeed. If they"óthe Iraqisó"can't do it, we will."

  In a direct challenge to Rumsfeld, the president used the bicycle seat analogy. "If the bicycle teeters," he declared,

  "we're going to put the hand back on. We have to make damn sure we cannot fail. If they stumble, we have to have enough manpower to cope with that."

  "I've got it," said Casey. "I understand your intent." What he didn't quite understand was just how much his world was about to change.

  The president was not done. Did Casey need the permission of Prime Minister Maliki to deal with the Shia militiaóespecially those led by Moqtada al-Sadr?

  Yes, Casey said, he did indeed need Maliki's approval to go after targets in the Sadr City enclave. "Maliki claims that he's working with [Moqtada al-]Sadr, that he may have a deal there." Maliki had refused to okay five missions against Shia death squad members in Sadr City and nearby areas, Casey said. "'If you're not going to let us go after them,' I tell Maliki, 'then ask Sadr to give these people to us.'" So, Casey said, "Maliki is exercising his sovereignty."

  The United States and the coalition had technically ended the occupation three years earlier, formally declaring that Iraq was a sovereign nation. As the president knew, Maliki didn't see the death squads as a threat. He himself had no political base and believed he needed the Shia extremists who supported him to one extent or another.

  "If the Shia believe that we're hitting the Sunni extremists, that we're hitting al Qaeda, then won't that reassure them?" Bush asked.

  "Well," Casey said, "70 percent of our effortótargetingóis against al Qaeda and the Baathists, 30 percent against the death squads." So he had a credible case to make to Maliki.

  "How's Maliki doing?" Bush asked.

  "He's a dramatic improvement over his predecessor," Khalilzad said, referring to the former interim prime minister Ibrahim al-Jafari, who was too close to the Iranians and Moqtada and was known as the "fog machine" because he talked endlessly and in circles. "He's decisive. He works at a faster pace, relatively speaking." But he was constrained by the bigger forces of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the largest Shia political party in Iraq.

  Casey agreed with that assessment. "Maliki's a little more like Allawi"óAyad Allawi, the CIA-supported Shiite who was the first prime minister in 2004. "He's still getting his legs as prime minister." Though Maliki viewed the Baathists as the universal enemy, he had included some Sunnis in the government.

  Bush reminded them that he had thought the Camp David conclave two months earlier would produce benchmarks for Iraqi political progress.

  Khalilzad said he was trying to put something together, especially on fuel subsidies and a law on investments. But on political issues, the ambassador said, it was just very hard. The implication was that it was not doable.

  "Every quarter," Pace said, "governments report to their populations on how they're doing. Maybe the Iraqi government ought to make a report to the Iraqi people quarterly on how it's doing."

  That's a new idea, Khalilzad said charitably.

  "You may need to consider it," the president said. But he wanted to go to larger issues. "Is there a normal life at all for the people of Iraq?" he asked. Since the invasion, he had asserted that the Iraqis, as all people did, craved freedom. Now his question was more basic. "Is there some matrix you can use to describe what life is like for the people in Iraq?"

  "You can see at night, when you fly over, lights are on," Rumsfeld said. "Currency is relatively stable. Schools are open."

  "More children in school," Bush said, "universities are full. More electricity. So life is relatively normal?" He paused. "We can make that case?"

  "Vast areas are doing well," Khalilzad said. "Seven million people have cell phones. The whole of the north is stabilizing. There is a building boom there. And part of the south is also doing all right."

  Zelikow, who had made a dozen trips to Iraq, could not contain himself. "Mr. President," he said, "Baghdad is in terrible shape, and that's one quarter of the population of the country. There's violence all over the place." There were more than 150 violent attacks a day in the countryóIEDs, car bombs, suiciders wearing vests of explosives, small-arms fire, ambushes, mortar, artillery, as well as some surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles. Zelikow named major cities and provinces outside Baghdad that were experiencing substantial violenceóin the north, Mosul, Kirkuk, Diyala; Basra in the south; and Anbar in the west. "The conditions there are not normal," he said. "For millions of Iraqis, they're in daily struggles to survive that we can only barely understand."

  As a professor of history, Zelikow had written about presidential decision making and the dynamics of a national security team under stress in his book The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis.

  So perhaps it was the pained look on Bush's face or the discomfort in his body language. Perhaps Zelikow didn't want to be entirely out of step with the optimism or didn't want to be seen as a naysayer. Perhaps he simply could not overcome the old clichÈ that advisers fold in front of the president. Whatever the reason, Zelikow quickly shifted ground. "But one of the inspiring things about the reason why we're there," he said, "and why we need to help these people, is the heroism of ordinary Iraqisóthousands of people we never ever hear of who are putting their lives on the line to try to make things work in a desperately difficult situation."

  Casey said that extremism in its many forms was itself a major problem that transcended the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shia. The death squads on both sides were pushing people into one camp or another. It was a struggle for power among the Iraqis. "We have to deal with that," Casey said.

  Are al Qaeda fighters still streaming in? Bush asked.

  "They are trying," Casey said. Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the current al Qaeda leader in Iraq, was "trying to pull in foreign talent."

  "Don't understate the sectarian problem," Abizaid said. "There is a sectarian line that divides the whole Arab world.

  It runs right through Iraq. Religion is a way of life, and so a sectarian divide is profound. And this struggle in Iraq could be one that is defining for the whole region." He spoke with an air of historical understanding: History itself might be against the kind of new order that Bush envisioned.

  Do you think Iraqi nationalism trumps religious convictions? Bush asked him. The U.S. approach was based on the presence of Iraqi nationalism, or at least reconciliation between the Shia and Sunnis.

  "The center may not hold," Abizaid replied. "It's tottering. The battle for moderation is hugely important."

  Was coexistence possible? Bush asked. "Because if not, a fix would be impossible."

  The question hung in the room.

  The United States could help shape it, Abizaid said. "We must shape it in Iraq."

  Josh Bolten, 51, who had been chief of staff for 16 months, had been quiet. His pred
ecessor, Andrew Card, had told him that his job would be "Iraq, Iraq, Iraq," so Bolten had immersed himself in the policy debate. He was the former editor of the Stanford Law Review and a Goldman Sachs investment banker. "It's most important for the Iraqi government to reach accommodation on how to divide power and resources. If it gets worse," Bolten asked, "what radical measures can the team recommend?"

  A long silence followed. "Radical" was a word rarely used in the Bush White House, where core principles and courses of action seemingly had long ago been settled: Taxes must be reduced. Presidential power must be increased.

  The Iraq War must be waged and won.

  Rumsfeld finally attempted an answer. "That's the back side of my earlier point. What do we do? There are things we can preview now and say, 'Here's what we may do. We could close bases, bordersÖ'" He even proposed fashioning some external event, but he was vague about it and it was not clear what he meant. It seemed he did not catch the weight and drift of Bolten's suggestion of something "radical."

  For the third time, the president returned to Baghdad. Could it be calmed down?

  "Yes," Casey said. Operation Together Forward was under way, with thousands more U.S. troops brought into Baghdad from other parts of Iraq.

  Hadley also had been silent for most of the time. The 2006 congressional elections were only 10 weeks off, and the possibility of losing Republican control of both the House and Senate seemed likely. The last years of the Bush administration were going to be rough no matter what, but he knew that if the Congress were lost, an unbelievably difficult road lay ahead.

  "Is the effort to seek reconciliation with the Sunnis a fool's errand?" Hadley asked. It was one of the harshest, most explicit questions he had ever posed. "And is there any chance that that strategy can succeed?" The mere posing of the question by the man who was supposed to remain neutral was surprising. Could the Shia and the Sunnis work together? Was the very idea of Iraq, as one nation, even possible?