We know who they are, Armitage said. We call them bats.
Bats? Garner asked.
Yeah. Because those sons of bitches hang upside down all day long with their wings covering up their eyes. But as soon as we close the door in the evening they part their wings and they look around and they flap around all goddamn night long, calling everybody.
Bates and Garner liked the nickname, and they bestowed it on the people they thought had been funneled onto their team by Feith to keep an eye on them. One of their Pentagon bats had four cell phones—later confirmed by the phone bills. When they deployed to Kuwait, this person seemed to be constantly on one of the phones. One day while deep in concentration on his cell phone, the man walked into a swimming pool. It was the highlight of the day, Bates recalled later. It made everyone's day.
Around this time Powell had one of his semiprivate meetings with the president. As usual, Rice was there.
Powell raised the question of unity of command. There are two chains of command, Powell told the president. Garner reports to Rumsfeld and Franks reports to Rumsfeld.
The president looked surprised.
That's not right, Rice said. That's not right.
Powell thought Rice could at times be quite sure of herself, but he was pretty sure he was right. Yes, it is, Powell insisted.
Wait a minute, Bush interrupted, taking Rice's side. That doesn't sound right.
Rice got up and went to her office to check. When she came back, Powell thought she looked a little sheepish. That's right, she said.
Yeah, Powell said, pocketing the small victory and addressing Bush. You have got a military chain of command that correctly goes to the secretary of defense, to you. But you have also created this alternative, which goes through Garner or whoever the civilian guy is, which also goes to the secretary.
Continuing his little lecture, Powell expanded. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this as long as you understand what you've done. But you have to understand that when you have two chains of command and you don't have a common superior in the theater, it means that every little half-assed fight they have out there, if they can't work it out, comes out to one place to be resolved. And that's in the Pentagon. Not in the NSC or the State Department, but in the Pentagon.
What Powell didn't say was that he believed the Pentagon wouldn't resolve the conflicts because Wolfowitz and Feith were running their own little games and had their own agenda to promote Chalabi.
Rice thought it was all a rather theoretical discussion. If they put Garner under Franks, that would mean Franks was the viceroy. Bush would never allow that, she knew.
But it was the way Rumsfeld wanted it. Both Franks and Garner reported to him, giving him the most control—always his goal.
Garner was holding regular meetings with Rumsfeld, trying to keep him informed, get decisions and convey his growing sense of the magnitude of the task.
The issue of money was omnipresent. Garner felt that almost nobody in the Bush administration thought there was going to be a big bill for the Iraq aftermath. One budget document Garner had prepared, dated February 27, 2003, showed that he had just over $27 million for his group. The numbers required for the basics of running the country were huge by comparison. He projected humanitarian assistance at over $1 billion including the next year, reconstruction at $800 million and running the government at $10 billion—nearly $12 billion, all told. Where would it come from?
He was seeking guidance. Hey, Mr. Secretary, Garner recalls asking Rumsfeld one day before deploying, We've got three options. What do we want to do in reconstruction? Do you want to take everything back to where it was pre-first Gulf War? Do you want to take it back to where it was before this war? Or do you want to build all new? The budget document also listed proposals to do a percentage of one of those periods or just repair everything. Yet no actual numbers—the important kind, with dollar signs in front of them—had been proposed.
What do you think that will cost? Rumsfeld inquired.
It will cost billions of dollars, Garner answered. Any of them will.
Well, if you think we're spending our money on that, you're wrong, Rumsfeld said, in his most sweeping, assertive way. We're not doing that. They're going to spend their money rebuilding their country.
15
the field expedient artillery brigade that was going to search the 946 locations on the WMD Master Site List started to assemble in Kuwait. Experts from other Pentagon agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency started flowing in, but the Exploitation Task Force, or XTF, didn't have enough people, equipment or vehicles to field all the teams they'd planned to send on site inspections. They scaled back, allocating troops and trucks as best they could.
On March 10, Rotkoff got word that he was to embed a New York Times reporter with the WMD-hunters. The order came straight from the top, he was told. He didn't recognize the reporter's name, but he scribbled it down in his daily notes, with the abbreviations and scratchy handwriting of a man in a hurry: Judith Miller. Write chem bio stuff. Secdef wants her embedded in XTF—gets here Wednesday.
Formally embedding reporters with military units was a fairly new Pentagon idea, and the troops on the ground were still getting used to it. War was now a 24-hour business, and Rotkoff knew only too well how, thanks to instantaneous, worldwide, secure video transmissions, military officers could spend half the day compiling information and assembling briefings for the bosses back in Washington.
Rotkoff would follow the order, but he was predisposed to dislike The New York Times after his experience with another Times reporter, Michael Gordon, who had been embedded at the ground forces' headquarters. Gordon was a skilled and experienced military affairs reporter but had a reputation for aloofness and self-importance. He inspired a Rotkoff haiku:
Gordon N.Y. Times
Demonstrates Media Ethics
It's all about him
On Tuesday, March 11, Garner held a press briefing in the Pentagon. It was on background so he could be quoted only as an unnamed senior Defense official.
In case there was any doubt about his plans, Garner told the reporters, What we need to do up front is pay the people in the ministries, be able to pay the army and be able to pay the law enforcement agencies and the court system. He said he planned to stay only for a few months. Iraq was in better shape than Afghanistan had been, he said. In Iraq you do have a somewhat more sophisticated country and a somewhat more structured country than you do in Afghanistan ... it has the structure and mechanisms in there to run that country and run it fairly efficiently.
A reporter asked about the INC, the Iraqi National Congress, the group headed by Ahmed Chalabi.
We're not trying to hire any of them right now. Okay? Garner said. He added later, We haven't gone out to hire people from the INC.
That night, Feith called Garner, distraught. You've damaged the credibility of both Chalabi and the INC, he said.
Doug, number one, I don't have a candidate for who should run Iraq after the invasion, Garner replied. And by the way, your boss doesn't have one either. I've heard Rumsfeld say two or three times, 'I don't have a candidate. The best man will rise.'
Feith wasn't subdued. He struck Garner as a bright guy, but very, very disorganized, and he seemed really worried, almost in shock. You've really screwed up here, was his message. You've really created problems for us, and everybody at the Pentagon is really displeased with you.
Look, Doug, there's an easy answer to your problem. Fire me. Hell, I'll go back to my company tomorrow. You don't have to settle for me. Go get somebody else.
We can't do that now, Feith said.
Wolfowitz also called Garner. He was smooth, in contrast to the excitable Feith, but Garner realized that he was being reprimanded by the deputy secretary of defense.
We're really going to have to be careful now, Wolfowitz said, because there's a lot involved with the INC and Chalabi, and we have to be careful how we frame our remarks.
&nbs
p; That night, the word came down to Garner: Don't talk to the press again until you leave. A day or two later, Garner's public affairs officer, a captain in the Navy Reserve, got another official word: He was not to speak to the press, even after he got to Kuwait.
At some point afterward, the official Department of Defense transcript of Garner's press conference was amended to add three highly unusual clarifications, interrupting the text of Garner's remarks, and praising the INC.
The INC has played an important role over the years in getting various Iraqi opposition groups to cooperate with one another, one such clarification stated in bracketed text. The U.S. government admired the INC's successes in organizing the endorsement by those groups of principles that the U.S. Government favors for the creation of a new democratic government in Iraq.
Larry DiRita, a former Navy officer who had served on the Joint Staff and was now Rumsfeld's special assistant and right-hand man, called Garner on March 13.
The SecDef wants to be briefed before you leave, DiRita said.
The next morning, Garner and his group met with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith and the top military men from the Joint Staff—Chairman Myers, Vice Chairman Pace, General Casey and a dozen others.
Rumsfeld seemed a little stiff and distracted. Unknown to Garner, Bush was about to issue an ultimatum to Saddam: Leave Iraq or it will be war. Rumsfeld was pushing hard that Saddam be given 48 hours.
I'm the mayor of Baghdad, said Barbara Bodine, a controversial former ambassador on Garner's staff.
Well, that's interesting, isn't it? Rumsfeld replied sarcastically.
Garner thought Bodine's comment was stupid and ill advised, but he said nothing.
That night Larry DiRita called Garner. SecDef wants to meet you in the morning at eight.
The next morning, Rumsfeld saw Garner alone.
Look, Jay, Rumsfeld began. I accept responsibility for all of this, because I haven't given you the time I should have given you. It was an unusual admission from Rumsfeld. Quite frankly, I just have been so engulfed in the war that I just didn't have time to focus on everything that you're doing. I tried to keep abreast of it, but I wasn't able to give it the time it needed.
I'm really uncomfortable with all these people you have running the ministries, he said. Iraq had 23 main ministries. Most were similar to the cabinet departments in the United States government—Agriculture, Labor, Health, Education, Justice, Foreign Affairs and Defense. Other ministries reflected the Iraqi economy or special problems—Electricity, Irrigation, Culture and Religious Affairs. Less than half the people designated to run the ministries were from Defense. I think they all should be from DOD, Rumsfeld said.
Mr. Secretary, Garner replied, we can't do that. There are clearly functions that belong to other agencies more than DOD. Bush's directive, NSPD-24, made it an interagency planning office.
No, Rumsfeld insisted. I think they all ought to be DOD. The same directive had put Defense in charge.
We just can't agree on this, Garner said.
They went back and forth, but Rumsfeld held all the cards. He was the boss. He was polite, but insistent.
Okay, Garner said, trying another tack. Give me your nominee for the Ministry of Agriculture. Garner had recruited Henry Lee Schatz from the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service. Schatz had been working internationally on behalf of the Department of Agriculture for nearly three decades.
Look, we'll find the right people, Rumsfeld said. I'm going to put together a good team for you.
I don't want that, Garner said. Let's look at health. He had designated Dr. Frederick Skip Burkle, yet another veteran of Operation Provide Comfort. He's been on every operation like this—he's been in charge of health—everything like this since about 1986, and he's never failed. He knows what he's doing.
We have competent people too, Rumsfeld protested.
You don't have anybody as competent as Burkle, Garner said. None of us do. Let's take the best there is, and the best are not all in DOD.
I could probably go along with someone like Robin Raphel because I know her and I respect her a lot and I know that she's a hard worker. Raphel, a former ambassador to Tunisia, was going to be in charge of the Iraqi Ministry of Trade. She and Rumsfeld had worked together when he had been the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East in 1983 and 1984. But, Rumsfeld added, I'm just not comfortable with the rest of these people. He obviously did not have alternatives and he proposed a compromise of sorts, or at least a delay. Look. You think about this on the way over and call me as soon as you get to Kuwait.
I'll do that, Garner agreed.
Garner left incredulous. All he could do was make sure he brought all the people he had designated and assigned.
Three days before the start of the war, Sunday, March 16, Vice President Cheney was on NBC's Meet the Press. My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators, he predicted.
The host, Tim Russert, pointed out that General Shinseki had testified to Congress that the postwar phase in Iraq would likely require several hundred thousand troops.
To suggest that we need several hundred thousand troops there after military operations cease, after the conflict ends, I don't think is accurate. I think that's an overstatement, Cheney said.
About the same time as Cheney's television appearance, Garner and the roughly 150 members of his team responsible for Iraq after the conflict gathered in a parking lot outside the Pentagon. Rumsfeld came outside to see them off. For most of Garner's people, it was the first time they'd seen the secretary in person. The team headed to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, and left on a chartered US Airways jet for Kuwait.
Emotions were running high. What went through my mind all the time was, I hope we pull this off, Garner recalled. He was thinking, I just need a little more time. Just need a little more time.
Within hours after they landed in Kuwait on March 17, Lieutenant General McKiernan, the commander of the ground forces, asked Garner and Bates to come to a meeting of his senior staff officers.
These are the two new members of the team, McKiernan told his staff, with his arms on Garner's and Bates's shoulders. Your ticket home is to make these guys feel comfortable.
McKiernan had said there was no space available for Garner's team at the military camp, so the group found space at a brand-new Hilton hotel complex outside Kuwait City. The resort had been leased by the defense contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's old company, Halliburton, in anticipation of war. It was an hour's drive away.
That same day, Garner and his deputy, Ron Adams, phoned Rumsfeld to go over the ministry list. Rumsfeld continued to press for Defense people.
Okay, maybe we can take a DOD guy here, Garner said at one point, then, at another, Maybe we can take one there. It looked like Rumsfeld might get more, maybe enough to have a majority.
Trust me, Rumsfeld said. I'm going to put together a good team for you. It'll be a great team.
Mr. Secretary, you can't get them here in time, Garner said. War was going to start any day.
Jay, we're going to give you a much better team than you have now, Rumsfeld promised.
Okay, that's fine, Garner said.
When he hung up, Garner turned to Adams. We're not going to do a damn thing, he said. We're going to go with what we got. Don't say a word to anybody. They'll never know.
The war began on March 19 with a target-of-opportunity strike on Dora Farm, a complex southeast of Baghdad on the bank of the Tigris River, where Saddam was incorrectly thought to be hiding.
As a pure military operation, the invasion seemed to go astonishingly well. On Day 3, the 3rd Infantry Division was 150 miles into Iraq, and Saddam's army was either being defeated or dissolving. Still, some of the former Iraqi soldiers were coming back dressed in civilian clothes or in the black-and-white garb of the Saddam Fedayeen, the militia commanded by Saddam's son Uday. Unprotected Iraqi civilian fighters were throwing themselves on armored formations. Mostly, they were being sl
aughtered. They tried insane, impossible, suicidal tactics, attacking tanks on foot, or trying to ambush Bradley Fighting Vehicles with small arms.
Rotkoff wrote a haiku:
Saddam Fedhayeen
Where the hell did they come from?
Everyone missed it
Spider Marks concluded that Saddam loyalists were pointing guns at the civilians' backs: You either attack the Americans or you die right here. The Iraqi people were simply and deeply fearful. A few days after the invasion, Marks, McKiernan and a couple of others were talking it over with Tenet in Kuwait.
So, what do you think? Marks asked the CIA director. You know, these guys are fighting. They're coming at us.
I can't fucking figure it out, Tenet said.
On March 21, 2003—the second day of the war—Rice and Hadley gave the president and the NSC a formal briefing on the nine U.S. and coalition war objectives. The point was to make sure everyone agreed about what they planned for Iraq after the shooting stopped. One goal was stated as: Iraq is seen to be moving towards democratic institutions and serves as a model for the region. In addition, they had to place as many Iraqi faces in positions of visible authority as quickly as possible.... Accomplish the above urgently.
It was consistent with what Garner had told the president the only time they had met. His efforts had been approved yet again by the principals, including Rumsfeld.
Garner spoke with Rumsfeld via secure video teleconference from Kuwait just about every day. Usually many others were in the rooms on both ends. On March 22, they renewed their firefight over who was going to run the ministries. Rumsfeld still wanted to handpick each one. Soon they were arguing, and Garner tried another dose of reality, telling Rumsfeld again that he could not possibly get new people over there on time.
You know, it doesn't seem like you're on our team, Rumsfeld said, according to a note-taker.
Bob Woodward Page 18
