fortified outposts manned by Iraqi army, police and U.S. forces. "There's no commuting to the fight," Petraeus and officers under him were fond of saying.
There also was a focus on setting the proper conditions for economic reconstruction and revitalization, drawing Moqtada al-Sadr into substantive negotiations, identifying and eliminating irreconcilable enemies, and working toward accommodation both locally and nationally. The paper ran more than 100 pages. It would become Petraeus's new campaign plan and the best hope for salvaging some measure of success in Iraq.
* * *
Admiral Fallon took over from Abizaid at Central Command on March 16. "We're going to start immediately," Fallon said to his staff that afternoon. One of his first questions was: What's our mission? He read the mission statement and nearly gagged. It was too tactical. He said Central Command was supposed to be a strategic command thinking big thoughts, engaging the world from the Middle East to the Horn of Africa. "We need to rewrite the mission statement. You can't have a dozen priorities," he said. "That tells me that we're doing everything and nothing."
He broke the senior staff into small groups to think and debate for an hour. When he called them back, he said, "Now let's see if we can articulate what it is everybody said." It was pretty obvious. "Two houses are burning. And they're burning very brightly." Iraq and Afghanistan would be the priorities.
"How many people are down here?" Fallon asked, inquiring about the size of the CentCom staff.
One of his deputies reported that it was precisely 3,415.
"You've got to be shitting me," Fallon replied. "Give me a breakdown of where they are. How many people are on my personal security detachment?"
Several answers came back: 53, 49, 60-some.
"Okay, let's take the lesser number," he said. "Forty-nine people are on my personal security detachment. For what?"
That's how it's been, he was told.
"Show me the breakdown of these people," Fallon ordered. "What they're doing, where they came from."
Several dozen were reservists mobilized to protect the commander.
"We have a war going on in two places," Fallon said, "and you've got three dozen guys mobilized for how many years now to guard me? This is bullshit. I had one guy in the Pacific. Get rid of them. Now."
You will be going to war zones, staff members told him. You'll need protection.
"If I go to Iraq, Petraeus better be protecting me," he said. In Afghanistan, his commanders would do the same. Let's trim it to 12, he said.
But the security detail had to cover his deputy, his wife and his house, staff members replied.
His quarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa sat on a small compound with a fence surrounding it and a manned guard shack behind itóinside an already heavily guarded base at the tip of a peninsula.
"He goes now," Fallon said of the guard. "Get him out of here. Gone."
He saw that two big black SUVs were parked at his headquarters, blocking the front walk. "What the hell are these?"
he asked. That was part of his security. He would be driven a half mile from his office to his quarters. "They go too, right now. Get rid of them. Get me a goddamn sedan I can actually sit down in."
Did he want an armored sedan?
"No."
Fallon believed he was witnessing the legacy of the draft that had been in effect when he entered the service in 1967.
To the Army, labor was free. People were available on demand, and the military had not changed its ways of using forces carelessly and ineffectively, as though there were an unlimited supply.
* * *
Speaker Nancy Pelosi felt confident that the Democrats, with their new majorities in both the House and the Senate, would be able to force a drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq. She saw the surge as the president's attempt to disrupt the antiwar movement and the efforts of the Democrats. Pelosi knew that since 2004, Bush had ordered at least four troop increases, each of 20,000 or more, mostly for additional security during Iraqi elections. One such increase had stretched from May to October 2006, when the violence had escalated nearly out of control. So why was this surge different? She took the question directly to the president in the early days of her speakership. "Mr. President," she said. "We've had surges." She briefly cited the others. "What makes you think this one is going to work?"
"Because I told them it had to," Bush answered.
"Well, Mr. President," she said, "why didn't you tell them before?"
Pelosi later told her closest staff members, "I'm very, very worried about the state of mind of a person who has decided to stay in a war without the public support." In early 2007, polls showed that two thirds of Americans didn't think the war was going well, while only 30 percent thought it was.
On Thursday, March 29, 2007, Bush and Pelosi were to speak at a ceremony under the U.S. Capitol Rotunda to honor the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II. Before the event, the president and the House speaker had a private moment in Pelosi's office.
"Mr. President," she said, "we owe it to the public to try to reach some consensus." She was convinced that the public wanted Congress and the president to come together on a solution, and she was willing to support legislation that would not require a troop drawdown, merely set it as a goal.
"My views are well known," Bush replied. "I've made myself clear."
"My views are well known too," Pelosi said. "But that's not the point. The point is we owe it to the public to try to find some common ground."
Bush wasn't interested.
The president later told me in an interview that he did not remember Pelosi's suggestion that they find common ground after his surge decision. "It created a lot of turmoil in the Congress," he said. "A lot of people on both sides of the aisle were hoping that I would pull troops out rather than put more troops in. And once you commit to more troops in, then the common ground, as far as I was concerned, would be to fund the troops going in and make sure they had what it meant to succeed."
* * *
Fallon had taken his first trip to Iraq as Central Commander, and afterward, Keane called Petraeus to see how their first meeting had gone. "It was okay," Petraeus said halfheartedly.
"Aw, shit," Keane said. "Come on. What happened?"
"I know you like this guy," Petraeus said, "but I'll tell you what, sir, he was on transmit here an awful lot." It reminded him of a public address system on a Navy ship, where the captain comes on and says, "Now hear this; now hear this." Fallon had plenty to sayówhat was wrong in Iraq, how to fix itóbut "he has no experience," Petraeus said.
Keane had hoped that Fallon would watch Petraeus's back in Washington. Every wartime commander needed an advocate to work the executive branch, the Congress and the media. But instead of a protector, it looked as if Petraeus might have another problem.
* * *
On Friday, April 6, 2007, Gates held a small farewell luncheon in his office for General Schoomaker, who was retiring as Army chief of staff. Schoomaker had volunteered to leave several months early so that General Casey could take his place. Under Army rules, unless a four-star position was available, Casey would have reverted to a lesser rank, an unacceptable demotion for an Iraq commander the president had lavished praise on for 30 months.
Gates invited some of the former Army chiefs, including retired General Gordon Sullivan and retired General Eric Shinseki, who had caused a stir in 2003 when he said publicly that there weren't enough U.S. troops in Iraq.
Gates asked Schoomaker, who had been brought out of retirement by Rumsfeld and Cheney to take over as Army chief in 2003, if he wanted to say something.
"I'm very proud of what we have done in the Army," he said. By his calculation, Pentagon projections had shown eight times during his tenure that the troops in Iraq would be drawn down, but each time the number had stayed relatively steady. He was proud that the Army had fulfilled its obligations despite the repeated failed assumptions.
"But let me tell you," he continued, "I really
am very disappointed about my experience in the Washington community. I've got to tell you that this town, as far as I'm concerned, is full of midgets." There was a lot of tactical thinking to solve political problems, he said, but not enough long-range strategic thinking. The main problem was that too many people in Washington never really understood the warrior's heart, never knew deep down inside what it meant never to quit, to be in a position where you would die rather than quit. Too many thought a fight was what happened on the Senate floor or in the White House. The real fights were the struggles for physical survival.
The former chiefs seemed a bit surprised by his speech, but at the end of the table, Gates smiled and nodded.
Casey relieved Schoomaker four days later, and on his first day on the job, he was invited to a briefing in Gates's office. The 12-month Army tours in Iraq and Afghanistan were to be extended to 15 months. Without the extension, five active duty Army brigades would have to deploy without a full year at home. It was the only way to surge forces, as the president had announced.
Lieutenant General Pete Chiarelli, now the senior military assistant to the secretary, had also warned Gates that something was going to have to be done to extend the Iraq tours.
"If we're going to maintain 20 brigades in Iraq through the end of the summer, there are five brigades that we are going toóbetween now and Julyóhave to extend," he said. "Now, we can do this the way we've done it before and we can dribble out the extensions. And you're going to have bad news every single month for five frickin' months" as the extensions are announced.
Or it could be done all at once by announcing universal tours of 15 months. Chiarelli said that soldiers in Iraq understood the situation and that the secretary would be better off acknowledging it and announcing the extensions to provide some measure of predictability.
"Every kid over there knows this," Chiarelli said. "They understand the math and they think you're an asshole for not doing it."
Gates and General Pace had quickly approved the recommendation and said they were going to the White House to get the president's approval. Casey was surprised at the hurry. The Army's rotation policy fell very much under the Army chief's responsibility. If it hadn't been his first day on the job, he might have said, "Wait a minute, there's no need to rush this out." But there had been leaks to the news media about the new policy, and Gates had decided to go ahead and announce it.
At 3 P.M. the next day, Gates and Pace appeared in the Pentagon press briefing room. "All the units that are there,"
in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gates said, "and all the units that will deploy are now extendedówill be extended to 15
months."
Schoomaker was caught off guard by the announcement, which came a day after his retirement. He had not been consulted. And the problem he had outlined to the president four months earlier, about the lack of forces to undertake the surge, had been addressed without anyone consulting either the incoming or outgoing Army chief of staff.
"It didn't take them long," he told his wife.
* * *
What Fallon called the "big food fight" with Petraeus developed throughout the spring of 2007. Fallon began getting RFFs, Requests for Forces, from Petraeus that he and his staff were to examine and forward to the secretary of defense, who had to approve every deployment order. There were complaints from Petraeus's staff that various units in Iraq were smaller than in the past. "There's a reason they're smaller," Fallon said. "They're supposed to be more effective."
Fallon also raged at his own staff as they shuffled the requests. "You guys," he said. "You're wasting my time trying to have me decideóa four-starówhether or not to have five guys or 15 guys here. This is nuts!" They asked him constantly to approve or disapprove specific requests. "Stop, stop, stop!" he finally said. "Bring me all of the requests that you're dealing with."
Fallon examined the list of RFFs. "Two thousand here. Ten there. Fifteen hundred here. Fifty here. Sixty there," he said, reading them aloud. "This is lunacy. We're going to stop rubber-stamping this shit."
Fallon was determined to challenge the merit of every personnel request and not send any more than necessary to the war zone. Each time Petraeus asked for more people, Fallon protested. "Look at all these extra people," he said once.
"What are they doing? I have a study in my pocket that John Abizaid had commissioned that said there's 20,000
excess people on the ground in Iraq right now."
Petraeus thought the number was 5,000 at most, and those were in the logistics and supply areas.
Fallon decided to say no several times, and Petraeus protested. He would accept a no, but he wanted everyone to be aware that requests, no matter how small, were being denied.
"Sir," Petraeus said. "We need to be very clear with each other. If you want to say no to me, say no. But then tell the secretary of defense, the president, and tell the American people that the commander has asked for something and not received it."
"Pete," Fallon told General Pace, "this is nuts, one of the reasons we're so AFU"óall fucked up. "We have all these people with all this experience and brainpower, and they're supposed to be making operational decisions. And what are they spending their time on? Detailing people. Flesh peddling. Look at all these RFFs."
As best Fallon could tell, it was consuming a thousand hours in Baghdad, his headquarters in Tampa and in Washington. "Nobody's doing strategic thinking," he said. "They're all tying their shoes. Now I understand why we are where we are. We ought to be shot for this."
Chapter 34
It was a hair-raising time for the administration, as Republican support continued to fade rapidly and few allies remained steadfast. But none was more vocal than John McCain. In early April 2007, Petraeus had led McCain, the 70-year-old Republican presidential contender, through the Shorja market in Baghdad. Attack helicopters overhead and more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees provided security for McCain and three U.S. congressmen. At a press conference following his hour-long tour, McCain said that the American public was not receiving "a full picture" of the improvements in security. "Things are getting better in Iraq, and I am pleased with the progress that has been made."
Later, McCain was widely criticized for making such a judgment after touring a market fortified with blast walls and cement barriers, surrounded by a virtual cocoon of American security. One U.S. military official told The Washington Post that McCain's diagnosis of Baghdad security was "a bit of hyperbole."
Condi Rice appreciated McCain's positive comments. She invited him for a private visit at the State Department at 8:30 A.M., on April 12. McCain seemed tense when he arrived. Rice had expected him to reiterate his optimism, but after some pleasantries, he let loose.
"We may be about to lose the second war in my lifetime," said the man who had been held and tortured for five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. The senator launched into a full-throated critique of the State Department's role in Iraq. You guys aren't fully in this, he said. You don't act like we're really at war. The civilian side is not doing its part. Rice listened calmly. His criticisms echoed a lot of State Department bashing.
"That's not true, John," Rice finally said. She led him through the institutional changes that had been made, including a revamped personnel system that ensured high-quality people were sent to Baghdad, as well as the transformation of the Provisional Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), which she said were now doing their fair share in Iraq. Rice also praised the new ambassador, Ryan Crocker. He and his embassy staff are the A team, she insisted.
After 20 minutes, they walked out of Rice's office for a photo opportunity and a brief exchange with reporters.
Asked about a suicide bombing that day in the cafeteria of the Iraqi parliament building in Baghdad's Green Zone, Rice said, "There will be good days and bad days."
"What does this say about security overall in Iraq and the surge," a reporter asked, "and how that is working?"
Attacks by the terrorists were expected, she re
plied.
"Hang on a second," McCain said. "We're just getting the third of the five brigades over to Baghdad." Spectacular attacks were designed to "erode the American public's will." But there was a larger picture, he said. "We are achieving some small successes already in the strategy being employed by General Petraeus and General Odierno."
McCain did not mention his private fear that the United States was on the brink of losing.
* * *
At a press conference with several Democratic senators on Thursday, April 19, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he believed that "this war is lost and that the surge is not accomplishing anything, as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday." Reid also drew a parallel between Bush and former President Lyndon Johnson, who 40 years earlier had deployed additional troops in Vietnam after 24,000 U.S. troops had already been killed.
"Johnson did not want a war loss on his watch, and so he surged in Vietnam," Reid said. "After the surge was over, we added 34,000 to the 24,000 who died in Vietnam."
Reid's statement was met with widespread criticism from friends and opponents alike.
Privately, Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat and Senate Armed Services chairman, lit into his colleague. He said he disagreed with both Reid's message and the way he had presented it. It was an awful, demoralizing message to send to the troops. Reid later told colleagues that Levin had "chewed his ass."
"Could I have couched my words more carefully? Maybe," Reid later wrote in his memoir, The Good Fight. "But I said it, and I meant it, and I am not apologizing for it."
The president was furious but didn't say anything publicly. I later asked him, "Were you shocked when you heard that?"
"I'm not shocked by anything in Washington anymore," Bush said. "This war has created a lot of really harsh emotion, out of which comes a lot of harsh rhetoric. One of my failures has been to change the tone in Washington.
The War Within Page 35
