Peterson struck a different tone.
"The widespread pessimism about the police is unwarranted," he said. "So many people in the media and elsewhere emphasize the bad and overlook the good. Today in Iraq, the police are standing up and fighting. They are doing a lot of good in a lot of places."
This contradicted almost everything the group had heard about the police, including from the CIA station chief, who had told them the day before that their ministry ran death squads and torture facilities.
The study group members had come to the small conference room within the embassy dressed in suits, a show of respect toward Iraqis. As General Peterson was finishing, the door burst open, and in rushed Chuck Robb, in shirtsleeves. Normally reserved, Robb was steaming. He had ventured out into Baghdad and was dumbfounded by how much support the U.S. military had to provide to one of the Iraqi army's "showcase" units.
"Everything that is happening under the Baghdad security plan is because of the American military and the Iraqi army, not the police," Robb said. He said a full U.S. Army company made up of several hundred soldiers was assigned to each neighborhood. "The police are not the disciplined group we are looking for."
Robb said he had talked with several ordinary Iraqis on the street and asked: Who would you pass tips along to if you knew about insurgents or terrorists or wrongdoing? "They said, 'The Americans. Not the Iraqi police,'" Robb reported.
General Peterson, his positive tale of progress suddenly undermined, said that U.S. forces hadn't finished clearing that particular neighborhood. After the clearing, the Iraqis would stand and hold it.
Robb shook his head no. He wasn't buying it. This was the military's showcase neighborhood and its showcase Iraqi unit, and all he had seen were American soldiers leading the way.
* * *
The study group members headed across the Green Zone to interview Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Hakim, head of the powerful Shia party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, had not been on the original interview list. But everyone kept mentioning how influential he was, how he and Moqtada al-Sadr were the real Shia power players, though neither had an official role in the government.
At Hakim's palace in the Green Zone, they found the cleric dressed in a black robe and black turban. He was serene and soft-spoken and served the group tea and orange juice. However, they did not feel welcomed as warmly as they had been by other Iraqis.
"Some want to return to the old regime," Hakim told the group. "They include Baathists, Saddamists and those who accuse us [Shia] of being infidels. The Baathists do not accept change. They resort to attacking the infrastructure.
One of their first acts was to kill my brother." His older brother, Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, a founder of SCIRI, had returned to Iraq after the invasion in 2003, only to be killed by a massive car bomb in August of that year. At least six of his other brothers had been killed under Saddam Hussein.
"Other states in the region want to turn back to the former regime," Hakim said. "They want the American project to fail.
"Some thought they could cure the violence by bringing the Sunnis into the political process. The problem is not the Sunnis. We want to live with them. The problem is the Saddamists"óthose still loyal to the former dictator.
He added that "the steps adopted by America did not reduce, but increased, the terrorists."
Hakim clearly had little interest in national reconciliation, which the group had been told time and again was the key to success.
"The government is the strongest in the region," he insisted. "It has a wide popular base. Eighty percent of the people support it." He didn't mention that the 20 percent who didn't support it were the Sunnis. Essentially, he was saying that the Shia and Kurdish majorities supported the government, so who cared what the Sunnis thought?
"Even though we have problems, we are moving forward," Hakim said. "If one tenth of these problems had happened in Europe, the government would fall."
Hamilton pressed Hakim on national reconciliation.
"Of course we support this process," Hakim said. "But to speak frankly, we must ask, 'Reconciliation with whom?'
With Saddamists, with Takfiri, or whom?"óby Takfiri, he was referring to a radical strain of jihadists who believe in taking action against those deemed to be infidelsó"If it is with those who have killed us for 35 years, the Iraqi people will keep fighting themÖ. We have held a conference on national reconciliation. We will hold additional conferences. But will they stop the violence?"
Not only did Hakim display no sense of urgency, he seemed to see no problem with the sectarian rifts in the countryónot entirely surprising for a man leading the majority party.
Hakim sat in a corner chair next to Hamilton and Baker. The vice president of Iraq, the finance minister and the national reconciliation minister sat next to him like quiet, subservient schoolchildren. It sent a clear message about who was in charge.
Also seated next to Hakim in robes and a turban was a man named Humam Hammoudi. He would oversee a committee reviewing the Iraqi constitution, meaning Hakim would have a large say in the new constitution.
Baker asked Hakim if he stood by the Iraqi government. He said he did. Hammoudi interjected, "All Shias support the government." It was a clear swipe at the lack of Sunni participation.
Hamilton and Baker stopped asking questions and started offering advice to Hakim, almost scolding him, and urging him to embrace national unity.
"Eighty percent is an extraordinary political base," Hamilton told him. "As an American politician, what that says to me is that the government should move very rapidly on national reconciliation because you've got such a good political base."
"The moves of this government are very limited. That is just reality," Hakim replied.
"It is not hard to blow this country apart. To keep the country together takes extraordinary leadership," Hamilton said, hoping to appeal to Hakim's vanity.
Later, Hammoudi observed that the questions the group members were asking gave an impression that they believed national reconciliation was the most important step. He said, "The Shia are unified. The Shia have only one enemy"órepeating Hakim's lineó"the Saddamists and the Takfiri." He said reconciliation would not stop the violence, implying that only eliminating the Sunnis would.
Baker didn't give up. He asked about the militias.
Hakim said there were four kinds of militias: 1) Those who had fought Saddamóthe "good" militias. 2) The facilities protection service, a kind of private army for each ministry, which Bremer and the Americans had created. 3) Shia and Sunni militias that people had formed to defend themselves. He said those could be turned into "neighborhood defense committees." 4) Saddamists, Takfiri and the like. "Those, we must confront," Hakim said.
"Time is of the essence for the Iraqi people and the American people," Baker said. He called for movement on quelling the militias and on creating national reconciliation. "It is early in the new government, but we are at a critical time."
The group left the meeting despondent, less certain than ever that reconciliation could become reality. It was one of their last interviews in Iraq, a sour note on which to leave.
Hamilton looked around and thought, "There isn't an optimist among us."
* * *
On the long flight back, Gates and Panetta tried to address the question "Where are we headed?"
"I have a very real concern that the Iraqis may not have the ability to govern themselves, may not have the ability to implement the reforms that are necessary," Panetta said. "If they don't, if they can't, then what the hell is our option?
What do we do? What's plan B?"
Baker said that he had recently talked to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who said that Iraqólike Egyptóneeded a strongman who could get things done. "Maybe," Baker joked darkly, "Plan B is bringing Saddam back."
The others pressed Baker on whether President Bush was going to listen to the group's recommendations.
"I wouldn't be
doing this," Baker replied, "unless I thought he would be willing to listen and do it." The president might not agree with everything they would recommend, Baker added, but from a political point of view he might have to go along in order to save his ass.
"Where is the central authority for dealing with politics in Iraq?" Panetta asked. He knew from his experience as President Clinton's chief of staff that someone in the White House had to take charge of such issues. But the Bush administration seemed to have no such authority. "Who controls policy there? Is it Hadley? Is it Rice? Is it Rumsfeld? Is it the National Security Council?"
The others agreed it was an important question. Panetta tried to get an answer but never did.
* * *
On September 5, President Bush addressed the Military Officers Association of America. Hours earlier, the White House had released an updated version of the administration's "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism." The 29-page document described successes in the "war on terrorism" and warned that the nation faced evolving terrorist threats over the long term. It argued that Bush's idea of spreading freedom and democracy offered the best remedy for worldwide terrorism. The document was long on goals and vague on how to accomplish them. "We're on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront," Bush said that day, "and we'll accept nothing less than complete victory."
He cited the successful December 2005 elections in Iraq and the killing of Zarqawi in June. He said that the country's new unity government was another sign of progress.
"If we retreat from Iraq," he said, "if we don't uphold our duty to support those who are desirous to live in liberty, 50
years from now, history will look back at our time with unforgiving clarity and demand to know why we did not act."
* * *
On September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the president gave an evening address to the nation. He cited the brutality of the attacks as the reason why leaving Iraq was not the right path. The events of 9/11 remained a guiding star for Bushóa constant reminder that the war in Iraq, with its immense political and security problems, was nevertheless a necessary and righteous endeavor. "Our nation is being tested in a way that we have not been since the start of the Cold War. We saw what a handful of our enemies can do with box cutters and plane tickets," Bush said. "Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone."
* * *
The next morning, September 12, Peter J. Schoomaker walked down the marble hallways of the Rayburn House Office Building and turned into office 2423. Schoomaker was into his third year as Army chief of staff, a job that had taxed him emotionally and filled his days with frustration. A bear of a man, Schoomaker had served in Special Operations almost his entire career. He had been a captain in the legendary Delta Force during the ill-fated 1980 operationónamed Desert Oneóto rescue the 53
Americans held hostage in Iran. The failed raid, in which eight American servicemen died, was another blow to the U.S. military on the heels of Vietnam, and it had essentially sunk the presidency of Jimmy Carter.
In the years that followed, Schoomaker had risen through the ranks and been involved in all the Army's major operations, including the 1991 Gulf War. He had retired in 2000 as a four-star general, after commanding all Special Operations forces.
But in the spring of 2003, just months after the Iraq invasion, he was driving through Wyoming, looking to buy a ranch, when a call came from Rumsfeld's office. Spurning all active duty generals, Rumsfeld put a full-court press on Schoomaker to return as Army chief of staff. Schoomaker flew to Washington and had dinner with Rumsfeld and his wife, Joyce. He also spent the better part of an afternoon getting a pitch from Cheney, who had been Schoomaker's congressman from Wyoming for a decade.
Rumsfeld wanted a more mobile, agile and lethal Army, and he told Schoomaker he would support him in re-creating the Army in the image of the Special Forcesósmaller, self-contained units that could deploy rapidly into any situation.
Schoomaker took the job, though he didn't see any definitive winning or losing. The war simply looked like a long slog, for which Rumsfeld and the others had refused to plan. Schoomaker had spent years during the 1980s in Lebanon, where he had witnessed insane, illogical escalations of violence. He had come away believing that human beings possess a dark nature and that once emotions boil over into fighting, they are nearly impossible to quell.
Office 2423 was home to Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania. A framed picture of Marines raising the American flag at Iwo Jima hung on one wall. On another was a picture of Theodore Roosevelt. Near the entrance sat a bronze bust of George Marshall, who supervised the U.S. Army during World War II and later became President Harry Truman's secretary of state.
The surroundings served as a reminder to visitors that Murtha was a military man to the bone. He had earned a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts for his service as a Marine officer during Vietnam.
He had voted to authorize the Iraq War in 2002 but had come to regret the decision. In November 2005, much to the dismay of the White House, he had publicly called for a redeployment of troops from Iraq and had been an irritant to the administration ever since.
Murtha, 74, was the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, meaning he had a firm hand on the purse strings.
Which is precisely why Schoomaker had come to visit. Weeks earlier, he had taken the unprecedented step of refusing to submit the Army budget by the August 15 deadline. His protest followed a series of cuts in the service's funding requests by the White House and Congress. Rumsfeld wanted the Army to get by on $114 billion, $25
billion short of what Schoomaker said it needed.
For the better part of an hour, the two gray-haired warriors had a civil give-and-take. The conversation turned to the war and the future of the military. Schoomaker believed the biggest future threat was global terrorism. Murtha didn't agree. He felt China and other potentially hostile nations posed more significant threats.
Schoomaker argued that it was important to win in Iraq. Most people he had met out in the country, he said, wanted to see it through. It was important to succeed.
Murtha launched into a diatribe against the president and the Iraq War. You can be as enthusiastic about the war as you want, he said, but we simply don't have the troops to sustain it for much longer. Public opinion was strongly against the war. How could the president ignore the American people? This is a democracy, Murtha insisted, pounding the table, waving a copy of the Constitution in the air and claiming that Bush had become "a dictator."
Schoomaker suggested that if Murtha thought the president's approval rating was low, he ought to take a look at recent polls. You'll find that the military is the institution that people have the most confidence in, followed by police and firefighters, then organized religion, he said. All those were above or near 50 percent approval. The president was down in the 30s, and Congress was in the 20s or lower. "Congress is even lower than the president,"
Schoomaker said.
"This meeting's over!" Murtha shouted, red-faced and angry as hell.
Schoomaker left quietly.
* * *
Several days later, on September 15, Bush held a press conference in the Rose Garden at the White House. The Washington Post' s Peter Baker asked, "Mr. President, you've often used the phrase 'stand up, stand down,' to describe your policy when it comes to troop withdrawals from IraqÖ. The Pentagon now says they've trained 294,000 Iraqi troops and expect to complete their program of training 325,000 by the end of the year. But American troops aren't coming home, and there are more there now than there were previously. Is the goalpost moving, sir?"
"No, no," Bush insisted. "The enemy is changing tactics, and we're adapting. That's what's happening. I asked General Casey today, 'Have you got what you need?' He said, 'Yes, I've got what I need.'"
Bush continued, "The reason why there are no
t fewer troops there but are moreóyou're right, it's gone from 135,000
to about 147,000, I think, or 140,000-something troops is because George Casey felt he needed them to help the Iraqis achieve their objective. And that's the way I will continue to conduct the war. I'll listen to generals. Maybe it's not the politically expedient thing to do, is to increase troops coming into an election, but we just can'tóyou can't make decisions based upon politics about how to win a war. And the fundamental question you have to askÖCan the President trust his commanders on the ground to tell him what is necessary? That's really one of the questions."
The president seemed almost to be having a debate with himself.
"In other words," he said, "if you say, 'I'm going to rely upon their judgment,' the next question is 'How good is their judgment; or is my judgment good enough to figure out whether or not they know what they're doing?' And I'm going to tell you, I've got great confidence in General John Abizaid and General George Casey. These are extraordinary men who understand the difficulties of the task, and understand there is a delicate relationship between self-sufficiency on the Iraqis' part, and U.S. presence.
"And so to answer your question, the policy still holds. The 'stand up, stand down' still holds, and so does the policy of me listening to our commanders to give me the judgment necessary for troop levels."
Of course, both the president and his advisers knew the stand up/stand down approachóas the Iraqis took charge, the Americans would reduce their roleówasn't working. Behind closed doors, they were searching ever more urgently for a strategy that would.
* * *
By mid-September, Chuck Robb realized that the Iraq Study Group was coalescing around a recommendation for a fixed early withdrawal from Iraq. The group was scheduled to meet the week of September 18, but Robb had a family vacation that had been planned for a year. So he wrote a memo to his fellow members. "Without being overly dramatic, I believe the Battle for Baghdad is the make-or-break element of whatever impact we're going to have on IraqÖ. My sense is that we need, right away, a significant short-term surge in U.S. forces on the ground." Taking U.S. forces from elsewhere in Iraq would leave them playing "whack-a-mole," because new trouble would likely pop up in the places that they left behind. Robb added that "time is of the essence," and if Together Forward did not succeed by spring, "we lose." His memo said it was "time to let our military do what they're trained to do on offenseówithout being overly constrained by a zero casualties or collateral damage approach." The clock was running out, and the study group report needed to be "bold and consequential," he wrote, adding, "I'm very much aware of the difficulties inherent in this brief rant." Baker and Hamilton wanted a unanimous report and a unanimous series of recommendations from the five Democrats and five Republicans. Without consensus, they knew they would have little or no impact, rendering their efforts meaningless. Robb believed he had sent a clear messageóhe would not sign on unless a "surge" option was included.
The War Within Page 13
