Fine, Garner said sarcastically. Whenever you get them together and go get them trained and ship them over here, we'll welcome them with open arms.
Rumsfeld just didn't think Garner's group was the A team. It hardly mattered, though. In Garner's opinion, Rumsfeld and Henry didn't have a clue what was going on.
Several days after Saddam's statue fell, Prince Bandar went to the White House to see the president. Rumsfeld was leaving as he arrived.
We'll accelerate the withdrawal, he told Bandar. Don't worry.
Bandar expressed concern about stability in Iraq to Bush. The United States military had occupied the country, but Rumsfeld was talking about a fast withdrawal. Bandar repeated what he had told Bush before the war. There would be a power vacuum in Iraq for sure. The Baath Party and the military, including the Iraqi intelligence and security services, had run the country.
Take the top echelon off because of their involvement and their bloody hands, Bandar said. But keep and maintain the integrity of the institutions. What you should do, announce all of the military report back to their barracks and keep, let's say the colonels on down. Somebody has to run things. And do the same thing with the Iraqi intelligence and security services. Look, their intel service was the most efficient. Take off the top echelon and keep the second line and let them find those bad guys, because those bad guys will know how to find bad guys. They could find Saddam.
That's too Machiavellian, someone said. The Saudi notes of the meeting indicate it was either Bush or Rice.
Let bad people find bad people, and then after that you get rid of them, Bandar said. What's the big deal? Double-cross them. I mean, for God's sake, who said that we owe them anything?
No one responded.
Saudi Arabia shared a 500-mile border with Iraq, and stability in the aftermath was a major concern. Chaos or an extremist, pro-Iranian Shiite regime would be a nightmare for the Saudis, conceivably worse than the relative stability provided by Saddam.
The Saudis estimated that there were some 3 million retirees in Iraq, sitting at home, getting about the equivalent of $6 a month. Go and pay them for six months, for God's sakes, Bandar advised. Each of them supports a family, mind you. So from 3 million you could get the support of literally 10 million people. Suddenly you have a major constituency for you because you have paid them off.
It was the Saudi way. Paying 3 million retirees would amount to about $100 million. Bandar proposed doing the same with the Iraqi military. Chop off the top echelon, and then pay the rest for three to six months. That might be another $100 million. After liberation, people in Iraq were going to have high expectations, Bandar said. Don't disappoint them. You have to make people feel that their life is going to get better.
Saddam's party and army—the instruments of repression—could be instruments of stability. The total cost of the buyout program would be about $200 million. It might be the best $200 million the U.S. ever spent, he said.
Bush indicated it was up to Rumsfeld.
Amidst the jubilation of the swift military victory, the news in the U.S. was increasingly filled with images of looting and chaos. Robin Raphel, who had 28 years of diplomatic experience, chiefly in South Asia and the Middle East, was the senior State Department official among the ministry advisers. As she and others watched television in Kuwait, waiting for their chance to move up into Iraq, they grew increasingly concerned about the state of affairs. Was Garner's team, only about 200 strong, supposed to run the entire country? It was pure fantasy.
Don't worry, Raphel said to some of the more junior members of Garner's team. The truth is we can't actually do this. So don't worry. We really just have to kind of put our finger in the dike, get there, and within weeks we're going to be on our knees to the U.N. and the international community. She meant to be reassuring.
I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it, Rumsfeld exclaimed during a Pentagon news conference on April 11. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it was just Henny Penny—'The sky is falling.' I've never seen anything like it! And here is a country that is being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free.
Rumsfeld's remarks were punctuated by a PowerPoint presentation of photographs shown to the journalists. The images bore captions or file names such as Iraqis share a laugh with a U.S. Army soldier ; Jubilant Iraqis cheer U.S. Army soldiers ; Happy Iraqis pose with a U.S. Army soldier ; and Two young Iraqis give the thumbs-up sign to coalition soldiers.
Let me say one other thing, Rumsfeld continued. The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, 'My goodness, were there that many vases?'
Both Rumsfeld and the press corps laughed. Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country? he asked.
Bush echoed the comment in a press conference two days later. You know, it's amazing, he said, the statue comes down on Wednesday and the headlines start to read: Oh, there's disorder. Well, no kidding. It is a situation that is chaotic because Saddam Hussein created conditions for chaos.
Fri. Apr. 11, D + 23, Spider Marks wrote in his war diary. No WMD.
The next day, he flew to Baghdad with McKiernan. Even with the euphoria of setting foot in Iraq for the first time and the hundreds of things on his mind, WMD kept percolating to the top. It wasn't just the failure to find the weapons; it was the concern that they might fall into someone else's hands. Think about the worst thing that could happen, Marks wrote on April 13 after a session with General Franks. His shorthand answer: Foreign Jihadists w CBW, meaning chemical or biological weapons.
On April 19, D+31, after a meeting with General McKiernan, Marks recorded the coalition's two top objectives: maintain integrity of Iraq's borders, and WMD—id/elminate.
But they weren't finding anything. Part of the problem seemed to be the intense looting and the limited number of forces available to secure sensitive sites, according to a report later written by Chief Warrant Officer Richard Monty Gonzales, the officer in charge of one of Colonel McPhee's MET units.
Targeted destruction of specific items was evident at nearly every site, the report continued. On one occasion, at an Iraqi Intelligence Services headquarters in Baghdad, the team was amazed to find Iraqis actively attempting to destroy materials, even while U.S. forces were scouring the area. In an urban environment—without adequate security—the tasks of eliminating looters, stopping deliberate destruction efforts, and safeguarding the team became a nearly impossible task.
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without mentioning it to Garner, Rumsfeld was working on a plan to replace him with a new presidential envoy to Iraq, a significant upgrade over Garner's position. The new envoy would be more like a super-administrator or even a viceroy. On April 8, Rumsfeld gathered a group in his Pentagon office so Ryan Henry could brief them on a list of potential candidates. Steve Herbits, who had set up a formal system for Rumsfeld on major personnel decisions that required that the jobs and goals be defined precisely, was present. By the end of this meeting, Rumsfeld said, I want Herbits to take this presentation and redo it.
Henry's list of possible envoys included 100 names. It included former Tennessee Senator and Reagan White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker, former Secretaries of Defense James Schlesinger and Harold Brown, former California Governor Pete Wilson, former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. There were some Brits on the list—former U.K. Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington was one—as well as a couple of Democrats—Clinton Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. Herbits knew the Democrats were not serious options. Absent from the list were the people who had experience in postwar stabilization operations, such as Richard Holbrooke, the former Clinton U.N. ambassador who had negotiated a peace agreement among warring factions in Bosnia i
n 1996, and James Dobbins, Mr. Postwar, the former State Department official who had the most experience in post-conflict situations. They were not considered because of their association with Clinton nation building.
After listening for about an hour, Rumsfeld told Herbits privately, I want you to do this, but understand that this is for the president.
Over the next 48 hours Herbits rewrote the job description. It boiled down to security, reconstruction and politics. He cut the list of candidates down to the top 10.
He wrote that the best candidate was former Secretary of State George Shultz, who had once headed Bechtel Corporation, a major government contractor. Shultz, 83, had stature as one of the world's most respected statesmen. Herbits called him an international adult. Upsides included, Capable of holding ground against all comers in press and in negotiations, and Prevents DOD from being blamed for acts committed or omitted.
The downsides included: Not known for taking direction. . . . Older—may falter if stressed too long. . . . may be more tolerant of State's viewpoints than DOD person. . . . May be accused of taking on the duties in order to further Bechtel's interests.
But Herbits had a dark-horse candidate for the job. In his view the perfect person to run Iraq was Paul Wolfowitz. He composed a separate four-page memo that would eventually be sent to President Bush and find its way into the hands of Vice President Cheney.
Getting Post-Iraq Right, Herbits typed as the heading on April 10, 2003. Since the diplomatic first phase has fallen short in achieving a broadly-based consensus for action, he wrote, firing a shot at the State Department, it was critical to get the phase after military action right. Herbits, who had been part of the Bletchley II group 16 months earlier and had concluded that the U.S. was in for a two-generation war with Islamic extremists that had to start with Iraq, wrote that success could mean Bush would have a model for the creation of a Palestinian state and even eventual Iranian overthrow.
Under the heading, Benchmarks to Measure Success, Herbits wrote, In the months after the shooting stops, it is essential that there be no civil war. Civil wars, rightly or wrongly, hearken back to Vietnam. The president's strategy will die in the embrace of such a comparison.
An orderly and healthy life for Iraqis must quickly be established on a self-sustainable basis. The interim domestic civilian government had to become a cherished model for the rest of liberty-desiring peoples and governments.
The presidential envoy had to have absolute authority on all Iraq questions outside of military activity ... report to the president if possible and the SecDef as only other option.
Why the Presidential Envoy Should Be DepSecDef Wolfowitz, Herbits typed, starting a new section. Wolfowitz's appointment would provide clarity to the world about the president's vision of freedom and thwart traditional Department of State resistance to seeking change in the region.
Because he was already the deputy defense secretary, Wolfowitz has all the necessary authority in his current position.
But perhaps most important and exclusive to Paul personally are the facts that he enjoys the widest support among Iraqis. In this context, of course, Iraqis meant Iraqi exiles, especially Chalabi. To say that he is not essential could be seen as saying that they are not important. His selection would unequivocally demonstrate the importance of the Iraqi Diaspora is, indeed, central. He is the best long-term symbol of the overall strategy.
Then Herbits added, His being Jewish is a plus: It is a reminder that this is not a war against religion, it is a clear signal that the position is temporary, that the former ambassador to the world's largest Muslim nation for three years —Wolfowitz had been ambassador to Indonesia from 1986 to 1989— has experience in being culturally sensitive.
The next afternoon, Herbits took the memo to Rumsfeld. The proposal was the kind of jolting, out-of-left-field thinking that greatly appealed to the secretary. He called in Delonnie Henry.
Take off Herbits's name, Rumsfeld instructed her. Put the following cover on it, and send it over the president's private fax. He wrote out a brief note saying that a good friend and associate had written this excellent paper, adding, I'm available all weekend if you'd like to discuss.
Over the weekend, Herbits was at Cheney's house for lunch to brief him on a conference at the American Enterprise Institute. He took a copy of his Wolfowitz memo.
I'd like you to see this, Herbits told the vice president, handing him the copy, because it might come your way.
Cheney looked at the paper. I've seen it.
Oh.
I went over to Rumsfeld's house for dinner last night and he wouldn't let me eat until I read it. He paused. Good paper, Cheney added, giving one of his half smiles.
• • •
Steve Hadley read the Herbits memo and agreed with it. Wolfowitz was his candidate. But Rumsfeld was sending lots of memos, papered everyone including the president with snowflakes. Picking Wolfowitz would be seen as tantamount to endorsing Chalabi, and the president was adamant that the United States not be seen as putting its thumb on the scales. In addition, the president knew that Wolfowitz did not have a strong reputation as a manager. The deputy secretary of defense was a thinker, but he could barely run his office.
Both Herbits and Rumsfeld told Wolfowitz that he was being proposed as the Iraq envoy.
If that's what they want, Wolfowitz told Rumsfeld, I'd be happy to do it.
Rumsfeld's recollection is different. Paul came to me and said he'd like to be considered. He asked me to do that and I did it.
Notwithstanding Herbits's suggestion that Wolfowitz's Jewish background was a plus, both Rumsfeld and the White House worried that putting a Jewish viceroy in the middle of the Arab world would be difficult.
Rumsfeld never told Wolfowitz why he had not been selected. Probably the Jewish factor weighed heavily in their minds, Wolfowitz later told an Iraqi-American friend.
Garner wanted desperately to get to Baghdad. He believed the only way to reconstruct the country was through contractors. They had to get the American and Iraqi civilians who would be doing the rebuilding hired so they could start work. But only three of the 13 main contracts had been signed. Franks's plan said that Garner and his team should not go into Iraq until the invasion was over and Phase IV stability operations began.
Garner flew to the Qatar headquarters of Central Command to make a personal plea to Franks. His mission was in jeopardy. Chaos was the mother of all Show Stoppers.
You have got to get me in there, Garner implored his old friend.
Jay, Franks said, there's still fighting in there. Baghdad was still a hot combat zone. Back in January he had promised only to get Garner in after major combat was over. Think about this. It isn't going to do either of us any good to get a bunch of your civilians killed in Baghdad.
Look, Tommy. Baghdad has vacuums in it that are being filled up with things you and I don't want it to be filled up with, and we're not going to be able to get rid of those things unless we get in there now. The violence and looting were beyond the scale anyone had expected. If you don't get me in there we're going to have more problems than a few civilians shot up.
Okay, damn it, Franks finally said. I'll call McKiernan and see if he can support this. They both knew that in the middle of a war the last thing the ground commander needed was a handful of civilians. Jay, he's got his hands full right now.
I know that, Garner said sympathetically, and I'll try to be as easy on him as possible but you've got to get me in there.
Franks called Garner that night. You've got a green light. I've talked to McKiernan. He said he's going to have a hard time supporting you, but he's willing to give it a try. God bless you. Be careful.
On April 21, Garner and eight of his people flew into Baghdad. Everything was filthy. Basic supplies were low. Electricity was on, then off. Garner went to the sewage plant, and found that it was not running. The heat was unbearable. His chief of staff, Bates, set off with the rest of the team in a caravan of nearly 15
0 new Chevrolet Suburbans in a 400-mile road march from Kuwait to Baghdad. Garner and his pickup team took over a 258-room palace-like former government building located near the center of the city.
The president was still concerned that the U.S. was losing the propaganda war. Whatever it was called—public affairs, global outreach, public diplomacy, strategic communications—they were losing.
One of Rice's NSC staffers, Jeffrey Jones, a retired Army colonel, had presented a SECRET briefing to the NSC principals called Phase IV Iraq Information Strategy full of charts, tasks, organization schemes, objectives and themes. It went nowhere. Karen Hughes, Bush's information czar and White House counselor, believed the State Department was not aggressive enough in explaining Bush's foreign policy. She persuaded Margaret Tutwiler, the grande dame of Republican communications strategy during the Reagan and Bush senior years, to take the top job in the State Department as the undersecretary for public diplomacy.
Tutwiler, 52, described in a Washington Post article as a one-woman psychological operations team, was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and had a deep, confiding southern accent. She had worked nonstop as communications and political adviser to Jim Baker for 12 years while he served as White House chief of staff and treasury secretary for Reagan and then as secretary of state for George H. W. Bush. She had one interest and focus: Baker's image and success.
Tutwiler was serving as U.S. ambassador to Morocco when she received her Iraq assignment—Do for Garner what you did for Baker.
When Tutwiler arrived in Baghdad, she was overwhelmed by the government and societal meltdown—no showers, no reliable electricity. She was being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Garner personally taught her how to cook military field rations—MREs, or Meals, Ready to Eat. Chicken tortellini number 19 turned out to be her favorite. Mess and gunk and garbage and waste were everywhere. There was no privacy in the rooms, if it was possible to call them rooms, with no doors or windows. Sleep was almost impossible.
Bob Woodward Page 20
