by Bob Woodward
Rice in particular was frequently pressing him. "She's a very thorough person, constantly mother-henning me," the president said.
Bush's leadership style bordered on the hurried. He wanted action, solutions. Once on a course, he directed his energy at forging on, rarely looking back, scoffing at - even ridiculing - doubt and anything less than 100 percent commitment. He seemed to harbor few, if any, regrets. His short declarations could seem impulsive.
"I know it is hard for you to believe, but I have not doubted what we're doing," Bush said in a later interview. "I have not doubted... . There is no doubt in my mind we're doing the right thing. Not one doubt."
Rice knew this characteristic. Yet doubt could be the handmaiden of sound policy, she thought. Careful reconsideration is a necessary part of any decision-making process. Rice felt it was her job to raise caution flags, even red lights if necessary, to urge the president to rethink.
Sometimes the best decision is to overrule an earlier one. Now events were their own caution flags. The static situation in Afghanistan might signal big trouble. On top of that, the news media was raising questions about progress, strategy, timetables and expectations. Newsweek magazine had used the dreaded "Q" word - quagmire - evoking Vietnam. A few days earlier, The Washington Post had run an op-ed article entitled "The Wrong Battle Plan," by Robert A. Pape, a University of Chicago expert on airpower. It began, "The initial U.S. air strategy against Afghanistan is not working."
"What's up?" Bush asked as Rice arrived in the Treaty Room. He had finished his daily physical fitness routine and was still (in his exercise clothes. He was not dripping sweat but had cooled down - perhaps the right time for such a conversation, if there ever was.
The south was dry, and the north was not moving, she said.
"And we've bombed everything we can think of to bomb, and still nothing is happening."
Bush sat down.
"You know, Mr. President," Rice said, "the mood isn't very good among the principals and people are concerned about what's going on." She said there was some hand-wringing.
The president jerked forward. Hand-wringing? He hated, absolutely hated the very idea, especially in tough times. He was getting some reports from Hughes and Rove about media stories, but not much more.
"I want to know if you're concerned about the fact that things are not moving?" Rice asked.
"Of course I'm concerned about the fact that things aren't moving!"
"Do you want to start looking at alternative strategies?"
"What alternative strategies would we be looking at?" he asked, as if the possibility had not crossed his mind. < "There always is the thought that you could use more Americans in this. You could Americanize this up front." That could mean substantial ground forces - several Army or Marine divisions. A division normally has about 15,000 to 20,000.
Bush was aware that in these very rooms some 35 to 40 years earlier, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had confronted similar decisions. Vietnam was the precedent.
"It hasn't been that long," the president said, referring to when the military action had begun.
"That's right."
"Do you think it's working?"
Rice did not really answer.
"We have a good plan," the president said. "You're confident in it?"
Kind of yes - maybe, Rice replied. He knew as well as she that the progress was yellow, not green.
They went back and forth. Rice was intentionally ducking and unwilling to take a firm position, worried it might tilt further discussion, close off options. Also she was unsure. She felt most comfortable when she knew precisely what the president was thinking, so she was sounding him out. But the president was on his chosen course and he had not really thought of shifting strategies.
The really important thing, she told the president, was for him to take the principals' pulse the next day, and if he was committed to the strategy, he better let people know it because he didn't want people starting to fall off.
Starting to fall off? Who was nervous? Who was concerned? The president wanted to take names.
Everybody is concerned, she confided. Nobody is very sanguine or comfortable. They all have concerns about what they are achieving and might be able to achieve. He had heard some; she had heard more. He was going to have to make some tough decisions pretty soon - about whether they were just going to stay on course or whether they were going to try to make adjustments.
The NSC was going to meet the next morning, she mentioned, and that was the time to affirm the plan or consider changing it. Winter was coming to Afghanistan and the conditions would be brutal, and military gains on the ground could become increasingly difficult.
"I think it would be good if you expressed confidence in this plan. Or if you don't feel that, then we need to do something else." Did they need an alternative strategy? The important thing, she said, was for him to go think about it before the NSC meeting the next morning. Then, at the meeting, he could give his view. "You need to talk about this," she said at the end of their 15- to 20-minute talk.
"I'll take care of it," the president said.
FOR BUSH IT was a memorable discussion. Rice's job was to tell him things. Sometimes he liked to hear them, sometimes he didn't.
He found it an "interesting full circle" that the discussion took place in the Treaty Room where he had just 18 days earlier announced the commencement of military action. But he knew what he wanted to do the next morning.
"First of all," he later recalled, "a president has got to be the calcium in the backbone. If I weaken, the whole team weakens. If I'm doubtful, I can assure you there will be a lot of doubt. If my confidence level in our ability declines, it will send ripples throughout the whole organization. I mean, it's essential that we be confident and determined and united."
The president wanted the same from everyone on the team. "I don't need people around me who are not steady. ... And if there's kind of a hand-wringing attitude going on when times are tough, I don't like it."
He attributed the concern to the echo chamber in the media. He was paying only peripheral attention to it. "I don't read the editorial pages. I don't - the hyperventilation that tends to take place over these cables, and every expert and every former colonel, and all that, is just background noise." He knew, however, that members of his war cabinet paid attention. "We've got these very strong people on the National Security Council who do get affected by what people say about them in the press.
"If there's going to be a sense of despair," Bush said, "I want to know who it is, and why. I trust the team, and it is a team. And I trust them because I trust their judgment. And if people are having second thoughts about their judgment, I needed to know what they were, and they needed to lay them on the table."
No member of the war cabinet had come to the president privately to express any concern. Before the next morning's NSC meeting, he talked to Vice President Cheney about what Rice had brought to him.
"Dick," he asked, "do you have any - is there any qualms in your mind about this strategy we've developed? We've spent a lot of time on it."
"No, Mr. President," Cheney replied.
THE NEXT MORNING, Friday, October 26, Bush arrived at the White House Situation Room for the NSC meeting. None of the principals, including Andy Card, knew what Rice had raised with him the evening before. He decided to let the meeting proceed with its routine presentations. He did, however, report that he had just spoken by phone with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
"The crown prince said we shouldn't strike during Ramadan." The Muslim holy month would begin in several weeks. "I'm going to write him a letter saying we'll continue because al Qaeda continues to threaten the United States, and they will keep fighting whether we bomb or not." As if to hint at his mood, he added, "And that's at the end of the day what is decisive."
"There's concern about the Russians," Tenet said. "Russians are providing arms to the Northern Alliance. That's good. We want to make sure the Russ
ians don't play the Tajiks and the Uzbeks against each other." Russia still wanted to have influence, if not dominance, in the breakaway republics. There was a lot of regional positioning going on, and the U.S. had to take this into account. "The Russians are more focused on the endgame than we are."
Tenet reported that they had CIA paramilitary team Alpha in Afghanistan with the Northern Alliance leader Dostum and were about to get one in with Attah Mohammad, another Alliance leader. Both Dostum and Attah were south of the city of Mazar. "There's a meeting with leaders in the north without Fahim Khan's approval." Fahim was still not moving so the CIA was going ahead without him. Tenet also said he hoped to have a team with Karzai, the leader in the south of Afghanistan. "I believe the southern piece is beginning to develop."
"There is more than enough food in the region," Powell said. The problem was that the food was being distributed by Afghan nationals. "That's what is not working."
"We need to do a major meeting to dramatize our humanitarian assistance," Rice said.
Rumsfeld reported they had done only 60 sorties the day before because the weather was bad. It was better today. "We hit yesterday in the Shamali Plains and Mazar" - the two places General Myers had said could be their focus. Some barracks had been hit in the eastern city of Herat. They planned to concentrate the bombing on the front lines in support of the tribes, not the fixed targets such as Taliban aircraft. "One half is on the Shamali Plains and half of it is on Herat and Mazar-e Sharif.
"We've got a third team in, plus some communications with Fahim's people.
"We have five teams in Uzbekistan waiting to get in," he added in some frustration. Two more teams were at Fort Campbell in the United States.
Now it was time for the president to deal with Rice's advice.
"I just want to make sure that all of us did agree on this plan, right?" he said. He looked around the table from face to face.
There is an aspect of baseball-coach, even fraternity-brother urgency in Bush at such moments. He leans his head forward and holds it still, makes eye contact, maintains it, saying in effect, You're on board, you're with me, right?
Are we right? the president was asking. Are we still confident? He wanted a precise affirmation from each one - Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Tenet and Rice - even backbenchers Hadley and Scooter Libby. He was almost demanding they take an oath.
Each affirmed allegiance to the plan and strategy.
"Anybody have any ideas they want to put on the table?"
No's all around.
Rice believed the president would tolerate debate, would listen, but anyone who wanted debate had to have a good argument, and preferably a solution or at least a proposed fix. It was clear that no one at the table had a better idea.
In fact, the president had not really opened the door a crack for anyone to raise concerns or deal with any second thoughts. He was not really listening. He wanted to talk. He knew that he talked too much at times, just blowing off steam. It was not a good habit, he knew.
"You know what? We need to be patient," Bush said. "We've got a good plan.
"Look, we're entering a difficult phase. The press will seek to find divisions among us. They will try and force on us a strategy that is not consistent with victory." In the secrecy of the room, the president had voiced one of his conclusions - the news media, or at least some elements, did not want victory or at least acted as if they did not.
"We've been at this only 19 days. Be steady. Don't let the press panic us." The press would say they needed a new strategy, that the current strategy was a failed strategy. He disagreed. "Resist the second-guessing. Be confident but patient. We are going to continue this thing through Ramadan. We've got to be cool and steady. It's all going to work."
Hadley thought the tension suddenly drained from the room. The president was saying he had confidence and they should have confidence. In their souls, Hadley believed, some of them had to wonder if the president might be losing confidence in them. Presidential confidence, once bestowed, was vital for all of them to function. Any hint of less than full trust would be devastating. They served at his pleasure. They could be gone or sidelined in an instant. Not only had Bush declared confidence in their strategy but more importantly, Hadley believed, he had declared confidence in them.
Tenet wanted to stand up and cheer. He went back to Langley and told his senior leadership what the president had said. What it meant, Tenet said, was simple: Keep going.
Rice believed it was one of the most important moments. If the president had opened up to alternatives, the war cabinet would have lost the focus of trying to make the current strategy work and flitted off to think up alternatives. She hoped that the recommitment would cause everyone to redouble their efforts on the current strategy that he had just then fully blessed.
Rumsfeld reported to some of his senior aides that the president had been particularly strong that day. He didn't provide details.
Powell found the situation in Afghanistan troubling, but he didn't think they were in a quagmire, yet.
Pakistani President Musharraf, their friend, was interviewed that evening by ABC anchorman Peter Jennings, who asked him right off the bat if the United States was facing a quagmire.
"Yes," the Pakistani president declared, "it may be a quagmire."
JAWBREAKER TEAM WAS approaching its one-month anniversary on the Shamali Plains. The Special Forces A-team 555 had been with them for a week with its laser target designators. Though the A-team had some initial successes calling in bombing runs, Gary could see they were getting leftovers - U.S. bombers who had been assigned to other fixed targets. If these bombers didn't find their target or for some reason did not expend their munitions, they were available to come to the front lines and attack Taliban fighters there. So there was an increase in bombing. But Gary had witnessed too many occasions when the A-team would spot a convoy of Taliban or al Qaeda trucks - once there were 20 trucks - and they would call and call to get a bomber and couldn't get one. The planes were still focused on predesignated fixed targets.
The battlefield on the Shamali Plains was unusually flat. About 35 miles separated the Alliance force of some 3,000 and the Taliban, Arab and Pakistani volunteer force of about 7,000. They formed battle lines in trenches, bunkers, fortifications and other military hardware placements protected by some minefields. Rain clouds were crossing the mountains which rimmed the plains, a forerunner of winter and the coming snow.
Gary sat down at one of the 10 computers his team had in their dusty quarters and wrote a cable to CIA headquarters. If we don't change the pattern, we're going to lose this thing, he wrote. The Taliban had never been bombed hard; they have not been impressed very much; they think they can survive this. The Northern Alliance is ready; they want to go and they are as ready as they ever will be, but they're losing confidence; they think what they are seeing is all we can do. If we hit these Taliban with sustained bombing for three or four days, the young Taliban are going to break. Most of them were conscripts, joining up because it was the thing to do, believing they were on the winning side. Hit the al Qaeda Arabs here also, and the younger Taliban would see it and crack. Three or four days maximum would be all that was needed. The front lines would collapse.
Most of the Taliban had come from the south, and they would want to leave, return south. But there were only a few roads they could come down, and the Northern Alliance, with bombardment from U.S. airpower, would control those roads. The Taliban would find themselves trapped. Less a few pockets around Mazar and Konduz, the Alliance would soon have the entire north of the country, even Kabul.
Gary sent the cable, which was only two pages long. Tenet decided to take it to the White House the next day.
DURING THE EARLY morning secure phone conversation that Rumsfeld had with General Franks on Saturday, October 27, the secretary wanted to make sure they were planning and thinking way ahead - to the worst case scenario if necessary.
Suppose the Afghan opposition, the Norther
n Alliance, the mercenary force that was being paid by the CIA, could not do the ;ob? They were going to have to consider the possibility that they would have to Americanize the war, send in large numbers of U.S. ground forces.
Marine General Peter Pace, Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman, -3T15 taking notes in a white spiral notebook. He wrote, "Be prepared to go in - major land war - either on our own or with coalition partners. . .. Process of organizing for it would be very, very useful. ... It would become visible and people would know that we're not kidding, we are coming, if you don't change sides now, we are going to continue the process."
Rumsfeld and Franks agreed to step up bombing the Taliban front lines as the Northern Alliance wanted. With the first A-teams now inside Afghanistan, that would be possible. But both the secretary and CINC were skeptical of the Alliance and General Fahim, who seemed slow to move on their own.
PRESIDENT BUSH AND the first lady were supposed to have their friends from East Texas for the rescheduled poker and Kennedy Center weekend that Saturday and Sunday. But the threat assessment was increasing, not abating, so Bush called his best friend in the group, Elton Bomer, who had been Texas insurance commissioner when Bush was governor. "Elton, I just can't let you come," the president told Bomer. "I'm just too worried, the assessments look too bad, and I just don't want to take the chance."
The Bushes instead went to Camp David, and the president joined the secure video-teleconference at 8:30 A.M. Saturday morning.
Tenet reported that he had two more CIA paramilitary teams scheduled to go into Afghanistan in the coming week. He was staking much on his paramilitary teams. Other than two U.S. military Special Forces A-teams inside Afghanistan, there was still no other direct U.S. presence in-country.
