If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for foolsÖ
Just after noon that day, Petraeus and Crocker arrived in the cavernous hearing room in the Cannon House Office Building, with its gold trim, heavy drapes and massive chandeliers. The crowds of reporters, TV cameras and protesters had arrived hours earlier, filling every inch of the room and giving the event a circuslike atmosphere.
Folding chairs had been brought in to accommodate more than 100 House members, each of whom would be given an opportunity to question the general and the ambassador.
David Gergen, a former adviser to five presidents, said on CNN that it was "the most important testimony of any general in 40 years."
About 1:30 P.M., Petraeus began reading his opening statement. He could hear the cameras of the photographers clicking in bursts, like so many muffled machine guns.
Suddenly, he had the strange sensation of looking down on himself as he recited his statement. It was a bizarre what-in-the-world-are-you-doing moment, an out-of-body experience.
As the hearing droned on, he found his seat so low that he had to sit forward, almost at attention, with his hands on the table. His back began to ache. During breaks, he gobbled Motrin pain relievers.
Throughout a long day that stretched into night, Petraeus and Crocker remained calm and measured, answering every conceivable question about the war. Petraeus said there had been enough progress that a Marine Expeditionary Unit deployed as part of the surge would depart that month, followed in December by the redeployment of an Army brigade. Still, he warned about too fast a withdrawal. He likened the task in Iraq to "building the world's largest airplane while in flight, while getting shot at."
"Petraeus Backs Initial Pullout; General Praises Progress, Warns Against 'Rushing to Failure'" read the next day's front-page Washington Post headline. The testimony was praised as credible. Petraeus and Crocker had bought the president more time.
That morning, the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Petraeus and Crocker were at the Senate for another marathon. Bush invited congressional leaders to the White House to discuss the Petraeus and Crocker testimonies and to hear them out about Iraq. The president was upbeat. His general and his ambassador had performed well.
Sitting next to the president in the Cabinet Room, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who disapproved of the war and of Bush, noticed an expression of bravado on Bush's face. Reid thought it inappropriate on what should have been a somber anniversary.
Bush said that radical Islamic jihadists were using the war as a recruiting tool, though he didn't seem troubled by it.
"Of course, al Qaeda needs recruits, because we're killin' 'em," he said, giving a slight smile. "We're killin' 'em all."
* * *
Jack Keane met with the vice president in the West Wing on Thursday, September 13, two days after Petraeus and Crocker had completed their testimony. The general sat in a chair by the vice president's desk and again expressed his concern about the persistent pressure on Petraeus from the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Fallon and their staffs, who graded his work, insisting on studies and reports to justify even the smallest request for additional forces. Suddenly, Bush walked in with his chief of staff, Josh Bolten. Everyone said hello, and Bolten left.
"You know, Dick, this is a nice office you have here," Bush said, looking around admiringly. He made it sound as if it were his first visit to Cheney's office, only about 100 paces from the Oval Office.
"Well, Mr. President," Cheney said, "this was your father's office," referring to the eight years when Bush's father served as Reagan's vice president from 1981 to 1989.
"Yeah, okay," Bush said, gazing around. "It looks a little different."
The president turned to Keane. "I know you're talking to Dave," Bush said to the former Army vice chief of staff. "I respect the chain of command."
Keane thought this meant that the president felt he couldn't bring in Petraeus directly because Gates and Admiral Fallon would also have to be present.
"I know that the Joint Chiefs and the Pentagon have some concerns," Bush said. "One is about the Army and the Marine Corps and the impact of the war on them. And the second is about other contingencies and the lack of" forces for a strategic response to those contingencies.
"Mr. President," Keane said, "in all due respect, the issue of the contingencies, for the life of me, I don't see how losing the war in Iraq could possibly help us with any of these potential contingencies. And that's what we're risking by not getting it right here." Defeat, or any sign of weakness, would shake relationships with allies, particularly where the ties already were tenuous, he said, and would encourage adventurism by adversaries. "It seems to me we have to win the war first."
Bush nodded.
Keane repeated his worry about the toll the Joint Chiefs, the CentCom staff and Fallon were having on Petraeus.
"There is very little preparation for somebody who grows up in a military culture to have an unsupportive chain of command above you and still be succeeding. You normally get fired." Petraeus "is under a national spotlight, and clearly the national interest of the United States and its credibility are at stake, and you're at the point of a spear and then that whole shaft is not in support of you." The result, he said, is that Petraeus "starts to look for ways to get rid of this pressure, which means some kind of accommodation." The proof was that Petraeus had already agreed to take out one brigade by December.
The president said he wanted Keane to deliver a personal message to Petraeus from the commander in chief. He laid out his thoughts, said good-bye and left.
Keane went to the large West Wing lobby, sat down among the couches and chairs and wrote down the president's words. Then he called Petraeus and said they had to meet.
* * *
That evening, in a nationally televised address, the president delivered an upbeat assessment. He said Petraeus and Crocker had concluded "that conditions in Iraq are improving; that we are seizing the initiative from the enemy; and that the troop surge is working." He referred to the turnaround that had taken place in Anbar province with the help of local tribes. In Baghdad, he said, "sectarian killings are down, and ordinary life is beginning to return."
The Iraqi government had a long way to go, but the president said the security gains would allow the United States to not replace about 2,200 Marines scheduled to leave Anbar later in September, and to bring home another Army combat brigade by Christmas. He said Petraeus expected to be able to reduce troop levels from 20 combat brigades to 15 by July 2008, meaning that the troops from the surge would be coming home.
"The principle guiding my decisions on troop levels in Iraq is 'return on success,'" Bush explained. "The more successful we are, the more American troops can return home." He said they would not all come home on his watch.
"Success," he said, "will require U.S. political, economic and security engagement that extends beyond my presidencyÖ.
"Some say the gains we are making in Iraq come too late," Bush said. "They are mistaken. It is never too late to deal a blow to al Qaeda. It is never too late to advance freedom. And it is never too late to support our troops in a fight they can win."
* * *
At a press conference the next day, September 14, Gates mentioned that he hoped to be able to reduce troop levels in Iraq to 100,000 by the end of 2008. It was a more dramatic reduction than either Petraeus or Bush had endorsed. His comments landed on the front page of newspapers around the country the next day, with headlines such as "Gates Seeks Bigger Troop Cut." Petraeus called Gates's military assistant, Lieutenant General Pete Chiarelli.
"Whoa," he said. "What's up?"
"Oh, don't worry," Chiarelli replied. "He knows. It's okay. He got a little ahead of himself. We'll wind this back down."
The defense secretary later said he saw
no way to reduce to 100,000 troops by the time Bush left office. "The process has gone a little slower," he acknowledged publicly. Petraeus had a detailed plan. The Iraqi government and security forces were a work in progress. And he didn't want to rush it, Gates said. "We'll just have to take it a step at a time."
* * *
On Saturday, September 15, Keane went to Quarters 12-A at Fort Myer, in Arlington, Virginia, where Petraeus and his wife, Holly, had Army housing while he was stationed in Iraq. Petraeus would soon be heading back to Baghdad. The two men sat alone, and Keane described his meeting with the president and vice president. He took out the piece of paper on which he had written the president's message to Petraeus and read it aloud:
"I respect the chain of command. I know that the Joint Chiefs and the Pentagon have some concerns. One is about the Army and Marine Corps and the impact of the war on them. And the second is about other contingencies and the lack of strategic response to those contingencies.
"I want Dave to know that I want him to win. That's the mission. He will have as much force as he needs for as long as he needs it.
"When he feels he wants to make further reductions, he should only make those reductions based on the conditions in Iraq that he believes justify those reductions. These two concerns that we are discussing back here in Washingtonóabout contingency operations and the needs of the Army and the Marine Corpsóthey are not your concerns. They are my concerns.
"I do not want to change the strategy until the strategy has succeeded. I waited over three years for a successful strategy. And I'm not giving up on it prematurely. I am not reducing further unless you are convinced that we should reduce further."
It was a message of total support. No ground commander could ask for more. That Bush had sent it through backchannels, or even at all, revealed the depth and intensity of disagreements between the president and the military establishment in Washington. He hadn't even told Gates or Hadley he had sent it.
Hadley, who at first was confident he would have known about such a message, later confirmed with Bush that it had been sent. When I asked the president about it in 2008, he explained why he sent the message through Keane. "I just want Dave to know that I want to win. And whatever he needs, obviously within capabilities, he'll have. I don't want my commander to think that they're dealing with a president who's so overly concerned about the latest Gallup poll or politics that he is worried about making a decision or recommendation that will make me feel uncomfortable."
After hearing the president's message from Keane, Petraeus said, "I wish he'd tell CentCom and the Pentagon that."
These were the people he had to deal with every day, and they had a very different perspective. The concerns of Washington, as always, were visited upon the commander in the field.
"I tried," Keane told him. He hoped the president and Cheney would force Gates, the Joint Chiefs and the Central Command to embrace the same game plan.
Petraeus said his congressional testimony had been an ordeal he had not anticipated. Sitting at attention in a chair that first day for ten and a half hours had been excruciating. Then, the absurdity of only a few breaks and little nourishment. He said he'd been prepared for the policy disagreements, but he'd been taken aback by the assaults on his character. The "General Betray Us" ad had been particularly hard. "Everybody sort of gets used to that," Petraeus said, "because everybody talks about it. But when it's you, when it's your name and your picture that's there, it's definitely an assault on your character." He said he didn't know if he could ever get over it.
Keane said that as vice chief of the Army, he had given testimony half a dozen times a year. But it had never been about his character. "You have to understand how unusual this is, that kind of behavior," he said.
Keane saw that his friend was emotionally devastated. During his televised testimony, he had seemed a little wounded, but that had made the presentation more effective. There had been nothing defensive or triumphant about it.
Though Petraeus had already agreed to return in six months for a public update to Congress, Keane told him, "If you can engineer not coming back, you should do that." That would be hard because his appearance had taken much of the pressure off the Bush administration. "But if you do come back," Keane continued, "given what we know will continue to take place, unless our assumptions are wrong, you'll have even more of a success story to tell, and I think that level of angst against this whole issue of Iraq will be diminished. I can't predict it for sure, but my sense of it is that while it won't be a love-in, I don't think you're going to get this kind of response.
"The real issue for you is that your entire military life, everything prior to this, and everything that comes after this is defined by one issue: Iraq. You've joined a select group of generals, and we haven't had one quite like this since Vietnam. Given the fact that you're succeeding and will continue to succeed, I think you're closer to the World War II generals than you are to the Vietnam ones." Dwight Eisenhower was the obvious model. "What you will do in the remaining months will define you for the rest of your military career and the rest of your life.
"The issue here is making sure that we don't squander the gains that we have made. It's very frustrating that you have to stand up against your chain of command every single day, to have to fight for this, as opposed to being supported by it."
Petraeus said the Army was considering him for new posts after Iraq. Among them: the four-star spot as NATO
commander, the Central Command post that Admiral Fallon currently held, or the head of the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), which oversees Army training, development of operational doctrine and procurement of new weapons systems.
"Dave, TRADOC?" Keane said, half scolding. "C'mon. TRADOC is an important command. I'm not disputing that."
But "You have to understand who you are now and what's happened to you." He meant what he'd said about Petraeus being more like the World War II generals. "We haven't had a general like you in a long time. You may not realize it, but you have more influence than any other military leader in this country right now. More that the Joint Chiefs, more than the chairman, certainly more than the CentCom commander." Petraeus's ability to shape public opinion was unmatched. "What you have is beyond what any other leader has," including the president. "You've achieved that status because of the transformation you've made in this war. Everybody knows that this couldn't have been done without you. So given that reality, that is a platform that you're standing on, whether you like it or not."
"I hadn't thought about it that way," Petraeus said.
"So," Keane said laughing, "the TRADOC assignment is out of the question. No thoughtful leader will let you be assigned to TRADOC. That's not going to happen." Speaking as a former superior and for the Army, he added,
"We've invested in you. If you want to stay in the military, you certainly will be permitted. You can make a case for you not staying, because there's no job after this that will compare to it."
The implied suggestion was politics.
"There's only two positions you should go to," Keane said. "One would be CentCom. The stature that you've achieved would pay us high dividends as leverage and influence in the region. No other military leader could. This region is the center of gravity for international security and strife in the world."
In the 20th century it had been Europe, where two world wars had been fought. But now it was the Middle East. "We will fight other wars here," Keane said.
The other possibility was chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but that depended on how long Petraeus decided to serve. The new chairman, Admiral Mullen, was just starting a two-year term, so the job wouldn't open up again until 2009 at the earliest.
* * *
At Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fallon could feel his influence waning. He sensed that Petraeus had a "jumper cable" to the White House that circumvented him and the normal chain of command. Still, his relationship with Petraeus had improved substantially over the c
ourse of the year, and in Fallon's view, they both had arrived at the conclusion that they could be down to four or five brigades in Iraq within two to three years, though neither would say that publicly.
Fallon continued to be outspoken, however. He told Gates, "If you think this is undercutting the effectiveness of our ability to do work here, just tell me and I'll eject myself."
"Keep working," Gates said, hardly a rousing endorsement.
Chapter 39
Back in Baghdad, Petraeus became increasingly immersed in the smallest details of Iraqi government operations. A top priority was helping the new government make political progress, but he found that that came in fits and starts, one painfully slow inch at a time. It meant that no issue was too small, no problem too mundane. He refereed internal turf battles and argued over issues more suited to a local city council than to a national government.
At one meeting with the senior Iraqi ministers, Petraeus remarked that a huge number of vehicles owned by the Iraqi government before the 2003 invasion were still marked as Iraqi government vehicles, though it wasn't clear who was driving them. "The majority of kidnap operations," he said, "are conducted with government vehicles." In addition, he said many were not obeying orders at the various checkpoints around Baghdad. So how did the government intend to get control of its inventory?
The Iraqi minister of interior proposed that new markings be required and that "we should accept only an authorization signed personally by a minister that the vehicle is legitimate."
Petraeus grimaced. Until recently, the minister of defense had had to sign even the smallest contracts personally and would spend hours signing foot-high stacks of paper.
The minister of defense said he had appointed the deputy ground force commander to head a committee to oversee
"the proper marking and control of vehicles." A major security problem had been turned over to a committee.
The War Within Page 40
