The War Within

by Woodward, Bob

  Perry asked about troop levels.

  "More U.S. troops will have a temporary, local effect," Casey repeated. "There will never be enough troops in Baghdad to stop them from killing each other. More U.S. troops can help briefly, but the city is hugeÖBaghdad is a troop sump."

  That last line hung in the air. The idea that the commanding general thought of the primary battlefield much like a swamp soaking up American soldiers was jarring.

  The Iraqis have a higher threshold for violence than we do, Casey continued. "They are not troubled by the level of violence."

  Casey was asked about the effectiveness of the U.S. troops in Baghdad.

  "They're having a dampening effect on violence," he said. "They hold it in check. If they weren't there, there would be a more significant bloodbath. Maliki has not demonstrated the political will to deal with the militias."

  "Is it too late?" Panetta asked. "Are the Shia playing for time?"

  "I ask myself that question every day," Casey responded. "You see the Shia hand moving things around Baghdad all the time. I just don't know."

  * * *

  After the video teleconference with Casey, CIA Director General Michael Hayden joined the study group in the Roosevelt Room at 10:15 A.M. A small, balding four-star Air Force general, Hayden, 61, had headed the CIA for just five and a half months. He had 36 years' experience in the intelligence world and had made his mark as director of the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005. The largest of the U.S. spy agencies, the NSA intercepts worldwide communications, including those of suspected terrorists in the United States communicating abroad under the controversial Terrorist Surveillance Program ordered by President Bush after 9/11. But Hayden, a skilled briefer, had weathered that storm after secretly presenting the details of the program to the Senate, which confirmed him by a vote of 78 to 15.

  Before his testimony to the Iraq Study Group, Hayden had spoken with Secretary Rice. Their friendship dated back 20 years, to when they had worked together during 1986ñ87 on the Joint Staff in windowless rooms across from each other in the Pentagon, she on an academic fellowship and he a lieutenant colonel. They had served together on the NSC staff of Bush senior. Rice believed Hayden was one of the smartest people she'd met, with a cool, dispassionate style. She had told him he could do a great service with his assessment to the study group. "This is the time to be pretty blunt about what is going on," she said.

  "Our leaving Iraq would make the situation worse," Hayden now told the group. "Our staying in Iraq might not make it better. Our current approach without modification will not make it better.

  "It's a legitimate question whether strengthening the Iraqi security forces helps or hurts, when they are viewed as a predatory element. Strengthening the Iraqi security forces is not unalloyed good. Without qualification, this judgment applies to the police. The army is uneven. Uneven, in this case, is good."

  He added later, "We and the Iraqi government do not agree on who the enemy is. For all the senior leaders of the Iraqi government, Baathists are the source of evil. There is a Baathist behind every bushÖTheir view is to get rid of the Baathists, and the militias will go away."

  Hayden's comments agreed precisely with what the study group had seen and heard on the ground during their short visit to Iraq. Hayden said the violence could be traced to several sourcesóthe insurgency, sectarian fighting, criminality and anarchy, and then al Qaeda.

  The study group found it interesting that Hayden put al Qaeda last as a cause of violence in Iraq. It was almost always the first cause that the president mentioned.

  When asked about regional influence, Hayden responded, "If Iraq were on the dark side of the moon, it would be as bad as it is today," meaning that the country's problems would exist even if it weren't in the turbulent Middle East.

  Baker asked about Syria. Hayden said there was "a running gun battle" in the intelligence community on what to do about Syria.

  On problems of national unity, he said, "The Iraqi identity is muted. The Sunni or Shia identity is foremost."

  Hayden, who had access to the TOP SECRET intercepts and human sources focusing on the Iraqi government, reserved his harshest view for Maliki and the leadership in Baghdad. "The government is unable to govern," he said flatly. "We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balanced, and it cannot function.

  "The inability of the government to govern seems irreversible. We have placed all our energies in creating a center, and the center cannot accomplish anything. The levers of power are not connected to anything." He said Ambassador Khalilzad ran from ministry to ministry talking to people, trying to get services running. But nothing ever happened.

  Nothing changed. "The violence is incredibly disorganized," he added. "There is strife over neighborhoods, strife over bridges."

  Hayden seemed to be shaken by the growing intensity and prevalence of the violence. An avid marathon runner, he offered an analogy. In every marathon, he said, there's a point where you know you can make it to the finish line, where you know you'll be okay. There had been no such point in this war. "I cannot point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around," he said.

  Hamilton sat still. It was the most pessimisticóand credibleóassessment he had heard.

  But Hayden was not finished. "A government that can govern, sustain and defend itself is not achievable in the short term." These were, verbatim, the president's articulated goals. "There is merit in recalibrating our effort to help the regions within Iraq," Hayden said. U.S. efforts might have to be redirected to the sectarian regions of Iraq, not just the central government of Maliki.

  He mentioned Bosnia as an example. "In Bosnia, the parties fought themselves to exhaustion," he said, suggesting that perhaps the same scenario might have to play out in Iraq.

  Perry repeated what Casey had told to the group earlier that morningó"We cannot succeed without national reconciliation." He asked Hayden for his take.

  "Given the level of uncontrolled violence," Hayden said, "the most we can do is to contain its excesses and preserve the possibility of reconciliation in the future."

  The study group members had heard plenty of bleak assessments about Iraq, but the CIA chief's was among the most disturbing. For some, it marked a pivotal moment.

  * * *

  Next up was Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, who offered a more muted assessment. "Powerful forces are not helping the achievement of a common vision," the ambassador said. "Reconciliation is necessary."

  Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, who had replaced Gates on the study group after the president had nominated him as the new defense secretary, asked, "Does Maliki believe we are prepared to carry out threats if he does not perform?"

  "There is a sense in Iraq that we are more interested in progress in Iraq than they are," the ambassador said. "We need to change that psychology."

  Panetta asked, "Maliki said he wants more control over security forces. Isn't that an invitation to attack Sunnis?"

  "For this reason," Khalilzad said, again avoiding answering directly, "it is imperative that they conclude the national reconciliation process."

  And on it went, leaving most of them shaking their heads.

  Chapter 22

  At 1 P.M., Secretary Rice sat down with the study group. "We need to establish a course that is sustainable," she began. "We're in a different phase now with the democratic government. It's good that Iraqis want responsibility. The United States may need to be more tolerant about letting them make the next moves.

  "It may be time for us to pull back a little."

  A "pullback" sounded encouraging to many members.

  Overall, Rice said, there was a realignment taking place in the Middle East. "There are extremists within the Arab world, and then there are more moderate Arabs. Many of the Arabs see Iran now as a more dangerous problem than Israel." Syria is widely viewed as destabilizing, she said.

  "Can we flip Syria?"
asked Perry, meaning get it to help with Iraq.

  "The Saudis don't talk to them," Rice replied. "So why would we go around our allies, the Saudis, who after all are much more important to the peace process?"

  That response agitated Baker. "These Arab governments fight each other all the time," he said. "The real question is who is going to lead?"

  The former secretary of state and the current one quarreled for a moment, with Rice acknowledging that diplomatic outreach to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem might be worthwhile. But she had reservations about establishing relations with Syria and Iran.

  "I am concerned that Syria is too high a price," she said. "For the Arabs, the rise of Iran is the threat. The Iran factor today is different than it was 15 years ago"óa pointed reference to Baker's tenure as secretary of stateó"so I have to challenge the notion that Iran could be an ally in this process."

  Her position did not sit well with Baker and several others. Nearly everyone else had told the study group that active diplomacy with Syria and Iran was vital to stabilizing Iraq and the Middle East.

  Panetta asked about the growing sectarian divisions in Iraq.

  "In Iraq, there is an existential fear of others," Rice explained. "These are people who want to be united, but they don't want to be left in the room with each other."

  No one challenged that contradiction.

  Each element saw the United States as a good luck charm, a "talisman," against the other, Rice said. "For the Shia, we help assure that they preserve their majority role. For the Sunnis, they want us to stay in order to defend them against repression and massacre." That role for the United States, she said hopefully, "allows us to step back and think about how to work toward unity without getting bogged down in the day-to-day responsibility for how Iraqis interact with each other.

  "They may do a lot of things that we don't like. We don't want to impose things. We need to give them confidence.

  Maybe we smother them too much."

  O'Connor asked about the grim CIA assessment they had received that morning from CIA Director Michael Hayden.

  "We are aware of the dark assessment," Rice answered. "It is not without hope."

  Hamilton asked how the Iraqi leaders could be pressured more effectively. Hayden had been adamant about the Iraqi government's inability to govern. Time was running out.

  Rice said she had been blunt with Maliki, telling the prime minister, "Pretty soon, you'll all be swinging from lampposts if you don't hang together."

  Concerning the Iraqi police, Rice said, "You've got police that are abusive," and referred, as she had to the president, to the "Bull Connor problem."

  "Are you persuaded Maliki is a national leader?" Hamilton asked as the meeting wound down.

  "I am persuaded he is a national leader," Rice answered, "but I'm not sure that he understands what that means."

  Hamilton launched into an impassioned lecture. "We have a government that cannot govern or that has not governed in Iraq," he said. "We're counting on them to do difficult things. How do you get them to move?" The longtime congressman slid off his glasses for emphasis. "We're spending $2 billion per week. We're losing men every day.

  The American people have soured on this war." A country should be united in war, and this one wasn't. "There is not unity of effort between the Congress and the president. There is not agreement on what to do in Iraq."

  Rice sat quietly and gave no response. Hamilton had no idea just how much disagreement there was within the administration.

  * * *

  Rumsfeld and Pace arrived at 2 P.M. in the Roosevelt Room. Though Bush had announced five days earlier that Rumsfeld was leaving the Defense Department, he would remain secretary until Gates was confirmed. "There are certain bureaucratic and legislative changes that you could recommend that would be helpful," Rumsfeld told the group. Sounding calm and sedate, he suggested the budget process in the U.S. Congress was too slow to get security assistance to the Iraqis. There were too many restrictions on U.S. efforts to train the Iraqi police. Civilians in the U.S. government had little willingness to serve abroad in a war zone. His Defense Department had more than three times as many civilians working in Iraqi ministries than all the other U.S. government departments.

  Hamilton and several others found it mind-boggling that given the critical problems, Rumsfeld would single out these sideline issues.

  "The military cannot lose the battle of Iraq," Rumsfeld declared. "But we cannot win without nonmilitary capabilities within the government."

  Pace then took his turn. "There are a lot of fixes that you need in Iraq," the general said, "security, economic and governance. The U.S. military can kill people all day long, but we need other capabilities in Iraq. The U.S.

  government needs to get younger, more energetic people to go to Iraq."

  Is training the Iraqi army the highest priority? Hamilton asked.

  "Yes," Rumsfeld interjected, "training is the highest priority. That's where we're beginning to put the money, the time and the effort." It had been nearly two and a half years since the Newsweek cover story called Lieutenant General David Petraeus, then the man charged with training the Iraqis, "the only exit plan the United States has."

  "What about the surge to Baghdad?" Hamilton asked. "Can we do it?"

  "We can surge to Baghdad from the current level of 15 brigades," Pace replied, adding that to sustain a surge beyond July of 2007 would require extending Guard and Reserve tours.

  "The more you look like an occupier in Iraq, the more you create a dependency among the Iraqis," Rumsfeld said.

  "We need to be pushing responsibility onto the Iraqis."

  Panetta asked about Operations Together Forward I and II.

  "Fundamentally, we still have a problem because Sunnis and Shia are still killing each other," Pace said. But then he added with unusual candor, "You could have a soldier on every corner, but Sunnis and Shia would still be killing each other. It will take Iraqi leadership to stop this killing. We can keep the lid on it, but they will continue to kill each other without reconciliation."

  Perry asked about Anbar province. Are the tribal leaders living up to their promise to pursue al Qaeda? And are we supporting them through Special Operations?

  "The tribal leaders have been delivering," Pace said. "Most of the fighting is now being done by the tribes. The Marines are backing them up. Special Operations are going very well in tribal areas, using intelligence from the tribal leaders."

  "Have we talked to the Iraqis about bases?" Baker asked.

  "We don't talk about it at all," Rumsfeld said. "We do need the capability to give them a sense of security. The U.S.

  military is not looking for more places to put bases. But the president of the United States would not want to forgo that possibility."

  Hamilton asked, "Do you need a base?"

  Rumsfeld didn't reply.

  Panetta asked if it were possible to have fewer brigades on the ground and maintain better trainers.

  "That is a concept that would depend on developing Iraqi capability," Rumsfeld said. We should reduce our forces based on conditions on the ground. We should say something along the lines of "We will remove X amount of forces from X provinces when you achieve these X benchmarksÖ"

  He insisted that the United States must put pressure on the Iraqis and instill in them a level of responsibility. "We essentially have to say to the Iraqis, 'Don't you want our forces to leave?' and make it their initiative to make progress so that U.S. forces leave. We have to give reassurances to the Iraqis that this is their country, and we have to give reassurances to the American people that we are leaving."

  "What should we say about failure in our report?" Baker asked.

  "You have to be clear that there would be dire consequences," Rumsfeld replied. "And that has to be part of the thinking here. We have to get that into their thinking. We have to get across these dire consequences to the Iraqis too.

  There has to be a timetable for pro
gress." And then with great passion Rumsfeld delivered one of his favorite lines, one he had delivered to the president and the war cabinet many times: "We have to take our hand off the bicycle seat."

  "What is the period of time here?" asked Vernon Jordan.

  "To the Iraqis, it's a period of years," Rumsfeld said. "The American people clearly don't want to stay as long. The American people's timetable is not as long as the Iraqis."

  * * *

  The next day, November 14, the study group held a secure videoconference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. It was Blair who had requested the interview, apparently aware that his views were in line with those of a majority of the study group members.

  Blair had recently sent his top foreign policy adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, to Syria to see if there was a way to pry open the diplomatic doors. Sheinwald had not succeeded, but Blair remained a strong advocate of talking with the Syrians.

  Baker asked Blair if he thought another big international conference on the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian issues would be helpfulómuch like the 1991 Madrid Conference that Baker had engineered when he had been secretary of state.

  "That would be great," Blair said. "The sooner people think we are determined to move in this area, the better. We need a big, visible expression of our determination."

  Hamilton went so far as to ask Blair about his expectations for the Iraq Study Group's report and recommendations.

  "We need well-respected, serious people, moving in a consensual way, with a plan for inside Iraq and a plan for the region," Blair said. "This is a bold, strategic opportunityÖ. It is the optimal moment for this report."

  * * *

  At 2:30 that afternoon, in a cozy fourth-floor conference room inside the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which Hamilton headed, the members of the Iraq Study Group gathered for a much anticipated session with former President Bill Clinton. Clinton showed up as usual, all charisma and fanfare. He was dressed in a sharp suit and tailed by an entourage so large that there weren't enough seats in the small meeting space. On the short walk from the elevator to the conference room, the incurable campaigner stopped in every office to shake hands.