Bush At War

by Bob Woodward

  "Weather is going to limit the Northern Alliance," said Cheney. "After a month they'll be locked in, so if we're serious

  about unleashing the Northern Alliance, we need to do it soon." Given the time constraints, Cheney wasn't convinced that holding the Northern Alliance back was the most expedient strategy. They had to do more than slowly grind down the enemy through bombing and defections. "Is Franks focusing on the targets that will make it easier for the Northern Alliance to move?

  "We should encourage the Northern Alliance to take Kabul," Cheney said. "We as a superpower should not be stalemated." He was worried that they had a weak defense at home and a weak offense in Afghanistan.

  "We need a victory," Bush said.

  "The only victory to the world might be taking the capital," Cheney replied.

  "We're going to release the Northern Alliance on Thursday or Friday," Tenet said, "and Franks is going to strike targets in the north to facilitate their move." The CIA director was almost speaking for the CINC - a blurring of operational lines between CIA and Defense that made Rumsfeld uneasy.

  Tenet continued, "We can't stop them from trying to take Kabul - the only issue is whether they can do it or not."

  How does taking Kabul help us against al Qaeda? someone asked. All agreed that the Afghan capital city could be a symbolic step forward. Since Afghanistan was factionalized, perhaps the capital did not have the political importance it did in other countries.

  They discussed how important it was for the U.S. to be mindful of the wishes of Pakistan, which feared the influence of Russia and Iran on a Kabul that would be controlled by the Northern Alliance. Still it would be hard to claim success if the Taliban retained control of the capital through the winter.

  Rice asked whether the Northern Alliance was getting uniform advice. Were they hearing one thing from the U.S., another from the Russians and yet another from the other players in the region? No one answered. The group moved on to the Middle East, Indonesia and a timeline to expand the terrorist list beyond al Qaeda to freeze finances of other terrorist groups.

  Rumsfeld again raised the question of anti-terrorist actions in a theater beyond Afghanistan. No one seemed interested.

  He announced more bad news. "We're unlikely to go with Special Forces in the north," at least in the short term.

  Myers said, "In the south we could get boots on the ground on the 16th, 17th or 18th." That was a week away, but it was something.

  "We need the American people to understand we're being successful without bragging," the president said.

  "We can be more positive now," Rumsfeld said. Most of the Taliban airfields had been damaged and the military could now carry out strikes more or less around the clock.

  "I think I'm going to say that the guys have done exactly what we asked them to do and we're well satisfied with the progress," said Bush.

  Myers gave the day's Bomb Damage Assessment, the top secret scorecard. "We're doing 70 sorties over Afghanistan. Sixteen of the 35 targets on the second day need to be evaluated." That meant that they may have failed to destroy nearly 50 percent of the targets. Monday's Pentagon press conference had not disclosed this. "Need to go after the transport aircraft. They've got one SA-3 that's still up but it doesn't threaten our forces." The U.S. had wiped out two of the three surface-to-air missile sites that comprised the Taliban's air defenses. They also dropped leaflets and 37,500 humanitarian daily rations into famine-stricken areas.

  "We're going to hit low collateral damage Taliban military targets tomorrow," Rumsfeld said.

  "There'll be pressure to step up the targets with higher collateral damage," the president said. "We've been successful so far because we've focused on the military, demonstrably important targets. It's important to maintain this focus."

  Bush asked about caves and hitting camps in the south. He said he was going to give an evening press conference in two nights. "We need to think about how to describe the military campaign, what we're trying to achieve." Testing some concepts, he said the next phase of the conventional military operation would be ongoing, but sporadic. "You may not see bombing for a while, and we're not going to tell you when we will resume bombing."

  "You're right," said Rumsfeld.

  "We're going to strike at the time of our choosing, when it's required for our mission," Bush continued. "UBL may not be caught, but it's still useful to do what we're doing."

  The president said he would be asking children to contribute $1 each to an Afghan Children's Fund. "The Department of Education is going to try and sponsor elementary school to elementary school exchanges, and we want to make a pitch to Muslim women and reach out to Muslim women." The Taliban's oppressive treatment of women was one of the most visible affronts of the strict fundamentalist regime, and Bush wanted to show that overthrowing it would liberate women.

  Cheney returned to the hard questions they were skirting. "Where will we be in December and January when UBL has not been hit, the weather has gotten bad and the operations have slowed?"

  "We're trying to get something going in other parts of the world against al Qaeda," said Rumsfeld again. He still thought that if the anti-terrorism campaign stalled in Afghanistan, they could always do something elsewhere. It would be in keeping with the global nature of the president's war on terror. At the top of the list for expanding anti-terror actions were the Philippines, Yemen and Indonesia. In the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic island nation of 83 million people, Muslim insurgents had rooted in the south, most notably the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, which had suspected ties to al Qaeda. Yemen continued to sprout a large al Qaeda presence after the October 2000 terrorist attack on the USS Cole, and the country was also home to representatives of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations. In Indonesia, Muslim extremists were everywhere.

  But he was sounding like a lone drummer.

  "I'm thinking a lot about endgames," said Bush, taking them back to Afghanistan. 'And if we're stalled by the weather, are we where we want to be?"

  "Look, pressure works," Rumsfeld said, trying to steer the discussion back to terrorist groups worldwide. "Let's get something started against them elsewhere in the world. The focus cannot only be Afghanistan."

  Cheney snapped back, "If UBL is in a cave and we get a hit, people won't care what's going on elsewhere."

  Rumsfeld launched into a discussion of what should be said publicly about the possible use of U.S. weapons of mass destruction if the other side used them. It was a frightening prospect, but it had to be addressed.

  Look, Cheney retorted, we just need to say we reserve the right to use any means at our disposal to respond to any use of weapons of mass destruction. That's the Gulf War formula - what had been said in the 1991 war on Iraq - and that's what we ought to do. Ultimately, the use of such weapons was a decision that the president would make.

  The current and former secretaries of defense, both deeply concerned about nuclear, biological and chemical warfare, stuck with the topic for a while. The U.S. was at war with an unconventional foe and they had to examine the possibility that bin Laden might have weapons of mass destruction.

  "UBL might not be deferrable," said Cheney.

  "Well," the president said, "sponsoring nations of UBL, those that support him, might have some influence with him. Should we send some messages, private or public?"

  We need to think some more about this, said Rumsfeld.

  The question of al Qaeda's weapons of mass destruction capability was what Rumsfeld often called a "known unknown" - something they knew they didn't know, something both possible and important but on which they had no definitive intelligence. It was chilling in itself. But it was in some ways less of a concern than the "unknown unknowns," the things that the U.S. didn't know it didn't know, the potential ugly surprises.

  Bush returned the discussion to known problems. "We need to think through how we're going to get some victory before the snow falls. And we need to think through Kabul." />
  "Do we want to take it?" asked Powell. "Do we want to hold it? If we want to hold it, what are we going to do with it?"

  "You know, the Russians never took Kabul," Rice said. That almost suggested it was a good reason to try to take the capital, since the Soviets seemed to have done nearly everything wrong.

  "Maybe the U.N. should handle Kabul," the president said.

  "Yeah, the U.N. is the best way to handle it," Powell agreed. "If the Northern Alliance take it first, though, they won't give it up." The slain Alliance commander Massoud had said he would never occupy Kabul single-handedly, but Powell did not think his successor, Fahim Khan, was as disciplined or diplomatically inclined.

  Rumsfeld said the weather was still good in the south. Playing off that, the president ended the meeting on an optimistic note. "The weaker troops are in the north so the Northern Alliance can take over the north," he said.

  AT 1:15 P.M., Rumsfeld and Myers appeared in the Pentagon briefing room. Rumsfeld announced that the U.S. had struck several al Qaeda terrorist training camps and damaged most of the Taliban's airfields and antiaircraft radars and launchers. "We believe we are now able to carry out strikes more or less around the clock, as we wish."

  Myers did not give the same report that he had given to the NSC - that 16 of the 35 targets needed to be evaluated. He said, "U.S. forces struck 13 targets yesterday."

  He showed slides of Afghanistan revealing the Day One and Day Two targets. "We did well in our initial strikes, damaging or destroying about 85 percent of the first set of 31 targets." He was being vague. In military terms, the difference between "damaging" and "destroying" is night and day, much as a car damaged in an automobile accident might still function.

  "You say you're running out of targets though, Mr. Secretary," said one reporter. "What are you going to continue to hit?"

  "Well, for one thing, we're finding that some of the targets we hit need to be rehit," answered Rumsfeld. It was more revealing than what Myers had said.

  "Second," he said, "we're not running out of targets, Afghanistan is."

  There was laughter. This was vintage Rumsfeld. Yet it left open the question: How do you win a war if the enemy can't be hit?

  Other reporters pressed on issues of bombing troop concentrations, providing close air support and otherwise directly supporting the ready-to-advance forces of the Northern Alliance. Both Rumsfeld and Myers responded cautiously, refusing to comment on when or if U.S. ground forces might be deployed, or how they would support anti-Taliban groups. At one point, Myers delivered his view of this new war.

  "You know, if you try to quantify what we're doing today in terms of previous conventional wars, you're making a huge mistake," he said. "That is 'old think' and that will not help you analyze what we're doing... . And that's what we've been trying to tell you for three days. It's a different kind of conflict."

  Replying to a question about what responsibility the U.S. might have if the Taliban were overthrown, Rumsfeld demurred. "I don't think [it] leaves us with a responsibility to try to figure out what kind of government that country ought to have," he said, adding, "I don't know people who are smart enough from other countries to tell other countries the kind of arrangements they ought to have to govern themselves."

  He didn't want the United States committed to nation building.

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, the NSC convened in the White House Situation Room at 9:30 A.M.

  The president raised the issue of how much classified and sensitive intelligence to share with Congress. "It's important for Don and Colin to brief their respective committees," he said. "We're giving the Congress colonel-level operational briefings. We need to do it at a higher level."

  They would appease lawmakers by sending Rumsfeld and Powell, both of whom knew how to speak candidly without giving out anything critical. "I want to accommodate Congress without giving up classified information," Bush said. In a practical sense this was impossible. Classified information tells the story of what is happening, which is what Congress wanted.

  The meeting turned to Syria, well documented as a state supporter of Hezbollah. Syria had condemned the September 11 attacks.

  "Syria needs to be against all terrorism," Powell said.

  The others agreed, and Rumsfeld added, "We can't let Syria help us with al Qaeda and then us feel constrained about pursuing them with respect to their support for other terrorists."

  "We need to get some of our people on Al-Jazeera," Bush said. "Let's get a daily schedule of appearances, let's get press briefings. We need people to feed some information to them."

  Rumsfeld gave his somewhat formulaic daily operational briefing on the war.

  "We did 65 flights," he said, although 70 had been planned. "Low collateral military targets. We're getting some emerging targets. We have not gotten all the helos, transports or the jets." Both Rumsfeld and Myers had said the day before that the U.S. owned the skies over Afghanistan and that the Taliban had only a few meager air assets left.

  "Let's make sure we don't hit any mosques," Bush said.

  "We got some additional caves and we're working Tora Bora," the hard-to-reach cave complex in the east, Rumsfeld said.

  Franks said he had a 12-man Special Forces A-team waiting to deploy into Afghanistan.

  "We'll work with the DCI to get them in," said Rumsfeld. He was seething about the slow progress of getting the Special Forces teams in. Weather was now one more excuse. He had sold the president on the concept of getting boots on the ground, and he wasn't delivering.

  "Given the weather," the president said, "now is the time to move in the north. We still have later options in the south, but we've got to move in the north."

  Rumsfeld made a general comment about U.S. policy on the Asian subcontinent. "We've got to avoid the image of a shift to Pakistan," he said. The anti-terror alliance with Pakistan was worrying rival India.

  Powell agreed. "Whenever we talk about the Paks, we have to talk about the Indians as well."

  Rumsfeld said, "DOD is linked well to AID" - the humanitarian assistance agency. "We want to make sure we're feeding the right people."

  "We're doing $170 million a year," Powell said.

  "Only refugee camps?" Bush asked.

  "Both on the border and in Afghanistan," Powell replied. More than 2 million Afghans had fled their homes during the last two decades and many were living in refugee camps in the border areas of Pakistan and Iran. Still more were flowing across the border every day since the start of the bombing.

  Rumsfeld put forth one of his trademark aphorisms: "Do no good and no harm will come of it." Doing good is risky. They should expect difficulties and criticism over their humanitarian assistance. Critics would say it wasn't enough, that it was feeding the wrong people, but they shouldn't let it deter them.

  "There's a point where we're going to need to do something visible elsewhere in the world," Rumsfeld said for about the fifth or sixth time. It was a point he had been trying to discuss for days now, but the others were not inclined.

  As they turned to finding new targets, the president warned again, "Just make sure we don't start hitting a mosque.

  "Why can't we fly more than one Predator at a time?" he asked. He had been impressed with the raw intelligence provided by the Predator. It was a useful, low-risk tool - and at a cost of only $1 million apiece, a bargain as far as military hardware went.

  "We're going to try to get two simultaneously," Tenet said.

  "We ought to have 50 of these things," Bush said.

  Powell then turned back to the overall military strategy. "We ought to try and consolidate the north and east before winter," he said. "Seize Mazare Sharif, control the border and the valleys."

  "I asked people to look at this," Tenet said. The CIA was indicating that Kabul too could fall before winter, and Tenet knew this posed a much tougher political challenge than the takeover of Mazar. "The Northern Alliance will want to take Kabul, and it would be hard to control," he warned
again. "We need a non-Taliban Pashtun to cooperate with the Northern Alliance on Kabul. And we should tie humanitarian assistance to it." Tenet said the food would "incentivize" someone to cooperate. But using food as leverage was not in the spirit of widespread humanitarian assistance the president was envisioning.

  Cheney seemed uneasy and indicated that he wanted to get the president away from such discussions, almost give him deniability. "The broad question of strategy needs to be decided by the president," Cheney said. "We will be judged by whether we get concrete results in Afghanistan. We need the PC to address the issue and then come to the president." The principals' committee was the proper place for this sort of tactical issue, and not in front of the president.

  The president later said his worry was that they would not keep their focus. "I believe we need to be a first-things-first administration." Afghanistan was first and foremost.

  At the meeting, Rumsfeld said about Afghanistan, "We need to lock things down so that Omar and UBL do not leave. We want to keep people bottled up."

  "Bottled up?" Powell almost sneered. "They can get out in a Land Rover."

  Powell had learned that bitter lesson years earlier when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the United States's invasion of Panama in December 1989. The U.S. had spent days chasing after Panamanian strongman General Manuel Noriega. Afghanistan was eight times the size of Panama and its border regions were remote and lawless - to think the U.S. could keep anyone bottled up was folly.

  The president disagreed with Rumsfeld's view. "Part of our strategy is to get UBL moving, get him moving," he said. If bin Laden was on the run, he couldn't be plotting and planning. "We didn't expect to get him on the first day. We want to unsettle his safe haven. That's why he's on the run."

  FOLLOWING THE NSC meeting, Bush made the short trip down Pennsylvania Avenue to FBI headquarters. Appearing with Powell, Ashcroft and Mueller, he unveiled a list of 22 "Most Wanted Terrorists" to supplement the bureau's popular and successful "Ten Most Wanted" list. "Now is the time to draw the line in the sand against the evil ones," he said as head shots of the named figures were displayed. At the top of the list were Osama bin Laden and two of his key lieutenants, Egyptians Dr. Ayman Zawahiri and Mohammed Atef.