soldiers who were missing: "Your soldiers are in our grip. If you want the safety of your soldiers, then do not search for them."
The TOP SECRET/SCI Iraq update that evening told the president that 4,000 U.S. troops were searching for the missing men. And his casualty chart read:
"Killed in action: 2,755.
"Wounded in action: 25,389."
Chapter 35
In May, Keane went to Iraq for another 11 days on the ground. On May 25, he reported to Cheney.
"There's a significant shift in momentum," he said. He had spent most of his time in the neighborhoods of Baghdad.
"Casualties will rise as we continue to go into areas we have not been in the past. IEDs still represent 75 percent of the instruments used against us." The advanced IEDs, the explosively formed projectilesóor EFPsósupplied by the Iranians could pierce all U.S. armored vehicles and were capable of killing everyone inside. "The IEDs have gone down in terms of their use, but they're getting more lethal."
"We need to buy time back here," Keane insisted. "The operations must go into '08 to have any chance of success."
Keane told Cheney that the U.S. troops in Iraq were idealistic. When the president had changed the mission, changed the strategy, changed the leaders and asked them to take on more risk, they had responded. The troops were committed, and their morale remained high. "They like being on the offense, and they believe they've been given a winning hand," he said, but recent leaks and statements "pull the rug out from underneath. This is very frustrating."
Cheney said that Petraeus and Odierno had just talked to the president about it. "Petraeus just did a SVTS [secure video] with the president and said that he and Ray were just scratching their heads wondering what is going on." He said that the president had told them that he was fully committed.
Overall, Keane said, the Sunni insurgency was considerably weaker. "Popular support is eroding. The AQI [al Qaeda in Iraq] relationships are fractured. The Sunnis are expressing a willingness to join the ISF [Iraqi security forces] in a political process. This is very significant. And negotiations are promising, but we must be wary of a fight-bargain-subvert strategy" on the part of the Sunnis. "The key military enemy is AQI. Its capability to undermine political support in Iraq and in the United States is real. They are weaker. They have lost their safe haven in Anbar."
U.S. commanders, he said, "are very much aware that they have the initiative with the al Qaeda, and they are focusing a significant, coordinated effort to go after them."
The bad news was that JAM, though not monolithic, "enjoys unimpeded access to Iranian support in southern Iraq and Sadr City."
On the political side, he said, "Maliki is beginning to move away from Sadr, which is a significant sign. We should make an all-out effort to discredit Sadr, because he's clearly emerged as our number one political enemy in Iraq."
Keane said that the CIA station chief in Baghdad had told him about a TOP SECRET covert operation that could be undertaken to stop foreign fighters from coming in through Syria. The full effects of the surge would not be felt until the end of July because the last of the five additional brigades would not arrive until June. "Every area of operation since last February that I visited, 90 days previous, especially in Baghdad, shows improvement," he said.
"There is a Shia or JAM problem in east Baghdad, and there's a safe haven in Sadr City. The commander's aware of it, and as they get all the forces in, in June, they're going to work against it. There are beleaguered Sunni enclaves that are hosting al Qaeda, still." He named six areasóEast Rasheed, Dora, Ghazaliya, Mansour, Amiriya, and Adel.
"There's a very difficult and complex fight against al Qaeda and the JAM in Diyala province. We probably could use some more troops on the ground," but instead the commanders were going to take troops that had been providing force protection at U.S. bases.
"The sectarian behavior that still exists inside the Iraqi government undermines the government's legitimacy." At times in the past, U.S. officers partnered with Iraqis involved in sectarian activity would look the other way.
"General Petraeus has changed that policy," he said, taking a shot at Casey. "That was a holdover from the previous leadership.
"The Maliki government is under extraordinary pressure. His intentions remain unclear. He's subject to bad information and malign influences," Keane said, but Petraeus had more leverage than any American commander before him. "We're occupying their capital city with our forces in a way that we have never done before."
Petraeus had publicly promised to return to Washington in September to report to Congress. Keane thought that was a problem, considering the expectations. "In a sense, it's become a timetable in itself to make an up-or-down"
evaluation of the surge. It was supposed to be only a progress report. By September, security would in all likelihood be much improved, but "we probably will not have met everyone's political benchmarks. And the danger is: Should that political uncertainty trump the very real progress that has been made? In my judgment, it should not.
"This is doable," Keane insisted. "We can succeed. We have to be given the time to succeed."
* * *
A week earlier, the president had forced Congress to fund the war for three more months with no timelines for withdrawal attached. But he hadn't quelled the discontent within his own party. On May 26, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky kept up the drumbeat of Republican dissatisfaction with Iraq. "The handwriting is on the wall," he said, "that we are going in a different direction in the fall, and I expect the president to lead it. I think he himself has certainly indicated he's not happy with where we are."
Key Republicans said they expected a new strategy the coming fall after Petraeus reported to Congress.
"I'm not going to dime that guy," the president later told me, declining to elaborate on what McConnell had said privately. "There was a lot of members that were sending signals, some directly to me. So I don't want to speak about a single guy. But I was getting word from all the senior team that were getting pinged by members that were saying,
'Petraeus better pull out,' 'We'd better do this,' 'We'd better do that.' 'Progress can only be made if fewer troops are there,' was kind of the attitude.
"I understand the politics of war, and I will listen to these allies and friends. But for me, the overriding concern is to succeed in Iraq. These political concerns are short-term compared to the long-term consequences of failure. And I would, from my perspective, I am more than willing to sacrifice short-term popularity to do what is absolutely right, so that in the long term, people will say, 'Now I understand why he made the decision he made.'"
* * *
Cheney arranged for Keane to come to the White House on May 31. He joined the president, vice president and Hadley for lunch in the small dining room just off the Oval Office. Keane reiterated much of what he had told Cheney but expanded on it. He said U.S. casualties were up, but that was because it was a true counteroffensive, similar to the Battle of Inchon in the Korean War and the Normandy invasion during World War II. If the Normandy counteroffensive had been damned because of high casualties, he said, "We would have folded up and gone back on the ships and gone home."
The strategy was working, Keane said. "The issue is time." He didn't want to lecture or sermonize, "but at the risk of doing this, there's something I do have to say to you. This military that we have in Iraq may be the most idealistic force we've put on a battlefield since the Revolutionary War."
"Maybe include the Civil War," the president said.
"That's possible," Keane said. "But the American people have soured on the effort and are no longer supporting the war." Similarly, Congress. "But nonetheless, every single day, they go out there and are willing to risk everything that they care about in life."
The New York Times had published a front-page story that weekend headlined "White House Said to Debate '08 Cut in Troops by 50%." It reported that Rice and Gates allegedly were proponents of t
he cuts, which would leave only 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by the next year. Such stories were "undermining" and "corrosive," Keane said.
Officers in the military, he said, even senior officers, didn't understand the nuances of Washington. "They don't separate the commander in chief, the president of the United States, from the White House. They assume if it came out of the White House, the president's involved in the process."
"Petraeus said something like that to me when he started out our last VTC," Bush interjected. "He said, 'Mr.
President, to be quite frank about it, Ray Odierno and I were wondering what's going on?' I told David, he's got my 100 percent support, as well as the administration's."
"The good news," Keane continued, "is that Maliki is moving away from Sadr. And that Maliki has never turned down a Petraeus request to kill or capture a Shia militia leader. That is absolutely astounding." Maliki had approved about 50 such requests.
"We must stick with Maliki," Keane said. "As weak as he is, and as weak as his coalition is, given the time that we have available back here in our own country, I don't believe we have time for the government to be changed out."
Maliki was under extraordinary pressure. "He reacts to the last cell phone call that he gets." Petraeus had told him how Maliki gets bombarded by the Shia, then the Sunnis, and then each night by the Americans. They all want something different from him.
Bush said that he believed Maliki had grown in the job.
"Ambassador Crocker is very well received by everybody," Keane added.
"Yeah, Crocker's a great guy," the president said.
"And he's well thought of. And he's got a wonderful reputation," Keane said.
"He and Petraeus have just a great relationship," he added.
"Maliki doesn't like Petraeus much," Bush said.
"No, of course, he doesn't," Keane said. "George Casey's strategy was to turn over to the Iraqis and let them do it.
Therefore he was giving them the lead and letting them drive all the issues and being somewhat passive. Enter Petraeus. He is putting demands on Maliki. Every time he walks in his office, it's about something Petraeus wants from Maliki." Keane said that Crocker needed some help. "None of his new people have arrived."
"They're going to be due in there in summer," Hadley said.
That was because the State Department still had a policy of not transferring its people during the school year, Keane explained. He noted that the military moved people when the military needed them, period.
Keane said it was unfortunate that Congress had insisted that Petraeus come back in September and give a public report. Requiring an American field commander to return to Washington and brief was setting a bad precedent. The field commander should report only up the chain of command, he said.
"I had nothing to do with that," Bush said.
Congress had passed a law requiring that Petraeus testify.
* * *
On June 6, 2007, I spent three hours in New York City with Bill Perry, the former Clinton defense secretary who had been very active in the Iraq Study Group. Perry, like most of the study group members, recognized that Bush had dismissed their main recommendations by adopting the surge. He was particularly dumbfounded because both General Casey and General Chiarelli had told him that adding forces would not be effective. "Let me make a forecast," said Perry, normally a cautious man. "In October, there's going to be a major change in the way the war is conducted. The reason I say that is because when Dave Petraeus testified to the Congress at his confirmation hearing, he told them he would come back in September and give them a report. Dave's an honest guy, so he'll give an honest report. My own forecast is that the so-called surge is not going to be successful. So his report is going to lay out a continuing disaster and he'll say it honestlyÖthen I think the president's going to lose about a third of the Republicans in the Congress, who up until now have been holding their noses and supporting him. At that point, the dynamics will change altogether." Congress would then have the votes to override any Bush veto, Perry said. "The legislature will gain control, and the ones who are in control are going to want to end the war."
* * *
Petraeus's forces were beginning to flip tribes in Anbar regularly, signing up leaders who had grown frustrated with al Qaeda violence and intrusions. It was an effort that had started in late 2005 with Marines in the al-Qaim area in the farthest reaches of Anbar, near the Syrian border. Slowly and steadily, the movement had spread along the Euphrates River valley to Ramadi, where tribal sheiks were now sending hundreds of local young men to join the Iraqi police force.
But what about Baghdad? Petraeus had heard that a former Iraqi Special Operations Forces captain and leader of a Sunni insurgent group called the Baghdad Patriots wanted to sign with the United States against al Qaeda. Abu Abed, also known as Saif, brought with him a force of somewhere between 40 and 100 experienced fighters.
Abed's sudden unemployment when the Iraqi army was abolished in 2003, like so many others, left him feeling disrespected and disdainful of the Americans. Since then, however, al Qaeda had taken over the Amiriya neighborhood, a Sunni enclave. They had blown up Abed's house and killed his brothers, and now they were coming after him. Amiriya was so violent that U.S. and coalition forces couldn't enter the area in Humvees. An M1 tank and a Bradley armored personnel carrier had been blown up in the neighborhood.
The first notice American forces had of Abed's change of heart was a cell phone call on May 29 from a local imam, who informed the U.S. battalion commander in the area that the militia intended to take its neighborhood back from al Qaeda. News of the Baghdad Patriots' requestóthey wanted the Americans to provide weapons and stay out of the wayórocketed up the chain of command.
Petraeus, out jogging with some young officers, was joined by a U.S. Army major who worked in Amiriya. A dozen soldiers from his battalion had already been killed that month. The major told Petraeus that the overture from Abed was significant, though there were considerable risks to helping him and his men. Prime Minister Maliki wouldn't be happy to see the Americans stand up a Sunni militia. And several officers wondered if the Americans were making a deal with the devil. After all, Abed was a former insurgent who undoubtedly had killed U.S. soldiers.
"We've got to support him," Petraeus ordered after the run. "Drive him on our Bradleys. Get ammunition from the Iraqi army and give it to him."
Within 24 hours, the neighborhood began to quiet. The Iraqi fighters knew the area, and they began leading the Americans to arms caches, al Qaeda hideouts and IEDs. While some in the battalion held on to their deep reservations, most saw the arrangement and the subsequent reduction in violence as a sign of progress.
Privately, Petraeus saw it as a potential turning point in the capital. The key to drawing down U.S. forces was to get the Iraqis to protect their own population so Petraeus's troops wouldn't have the job.
* * *
Gates approached a handful of senators, including the new chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, to inquire about the prospects of getting Pace confirmed for another two-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. "What do you think?" Gates asked.
"It's going to be a battle royal up here on Iraq," Levin replied.
Gates asked Levin to "sound out" colleagues.
Levin felt it mostly boiled down to accountability. Congress had held no one at the highest levels accountable for failed policies. He knew there was no way Pace could get through a confirmation hearing without it becoming a venting session.
"Well, can you see whether or not others feel that way?" Gates asked.
Levin, who had served in the Senate since 1979 and had voted against the war in 2002, approached half a dozen of his Democratic colleagues and some Republicans. They all told him it would involve a real fight to get Pace confirmed. A few said, "Hell, no."
For starters, Pace had played a role in shaping a strategy that had not worked. But worse, there was a feeling among the senatorsóreinf
orced by various military officersóthat Pace had not been outspoken, that he wasn't the kind of guy who would stand up to the administration and say things were on the wrong track. Retired General James Jones, for example, the Marine commandant from 1999 to 2003, had said Pace was too docile in dealing with Rumsfeld and had likened him to "the parrot on the secretary's shoulder."
It'll be a bloody battle, Levin warned Gates. A confirmation hearing would focus on all the failures in Iraq and Pace's role in them. He didn't see how Pace could get confirmed. Gates decided not to take the chance.
On Friday, June 8, Gates announced that General Pace would step down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs in September. He said he wanted to spare Pace the rancorous congressional hearings. "I think that the events of the last several months have simply created an environment in which I think there would be a confirmation process that would not be in the best interests of the country," Gates told reporters at the Pentagon. "I am disappointed that circumstances make this kind of a decision necessary."
Despite Gates's effort to sugarcoat his decision, Pace was being fired. He would retire after just two years in the post, the shortest tenure of any chairman in more than four decades. Along with the simultaneous retirement of Admiral Edmund Giambastiani, the JCS vice chairman, it meant that the top Washington generals linked to Rumsfeld's tenure were all but gone.
* * *
In June, Hadley sent O'Sullivan to Iraq. She saw panic everywhere. The additional brigades and the new strategy were in place, and yet violence was skyrocketing, with attacks reaching more than 1,550 a week, about 220 a dayóa new record. And on top of that, the politics remained stagnant. Reconciliation was nowhere in sight. But as unbelievable as it might seem, she found Baghdad preferable to Washington.
Chapter 36
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