Bush At War

by Bob Woodward

  I could see the trifocal lenses in his glasses we were so close. We were standing just inside the entrance as a parade of uniformed military men and women and civilians walked by.

  "Known threats are not the worry," he said. On one occasion he had asked about the number of warnings before the USS Cole had been attacked in Yemen in 2000. The answer had been in the thousands.

  "Can you believe that!" Rumsfeld said. The sea of warnings becomes meaningless. No one really paid attention and if people acted on each threat, he said, the U.S. would be chased out of places like Yemen.

  How was the war going? I asked.

  "There is the war you see and the war you don't see," he said. This was accompanied by appropriate hand motions - the war up here, above and seen, and the war down there, covert, unseen.

  "They'll hit us again," Rumsfeld said in a matter-of-fact tone. "We have them off balance." He then jabbed three of his fingers into the center of my chest, tipping me back and slightly off balance.

  Nice wrestling move, I thought, but then I shifted forward, taking the bait. I said that it was not enough because I had regained my balance rather quickly.

  Rumsfeld gave one of his big, healthy, happy, full-faced smiles that overpower his face. He had made his point. We talked for a few more minutes. He asked for my address and a fax number so he could send me some material on his work on the defense commissions and walked off preppy and peppy. A man at war? It didn't seem that way. He was very comfortable, exuding self-confidence. I didn't know if he was too confident.

  IN THE SPRING, after having had the run of Afghanistan for nearly five months, the U.S. military discovered huge amounts of munitions that the Taliban and al Qaeda had hidden in caves. In one they found 2 million rounds of ammunition; in others mortars, rockets, even some tanks. It was a whole underground support system. It was quite embarrassing to discover it so late in the game.

  "Are you going to destroy all of this?" Bush asked Rumsfeld.

  "No," he replied, "we're saving it to arm the new Afghan army."

  Rice joked that it was going to be called Rumsfeld's Cavalry.

  Rumsfeld wondered why they couldn't just let the Afghan warlords create an army. Powell and the State Department argued that Karzai was their guy and they needed a strong central government so Afghanistan did not, yet again, become a great power game in which all interested parties would try to carve out territory or spheres of influence.

  Rumsfeld had become something of a media star because of his daily televised briefings. On Wednesday, May 1, 2002, he and General Pace, the JCS vice chairman, had been answering questions for half an hour when a reporter asked what Rumsfeld had achieved. He bristled.

  "We fashioned a new defense strategy," he said. "It is a strategy that is more appropriate for the 21st century than what we had, we believe. We are convinced, we are unanimously convinced - the senior civilian and military leadership."

  He listed new constructs, planning guidance, plans, the selection of maybe a dozen new four star officers. "We have been involved in the global war on terrorism," he said. He had to contend with department procedures which can take two years. "The freight train comes down the track and it's filled way over there, and until it runs to the end, you can't see what's inside of it. And every time you try to reach in, it's like putting your hand in a gear box, because this depends on that, and this depended on that, and each piece depended on something else. And you think you're making a wise decision if you grab in the middle of it, but in fact, if all the layers that led to those things are not readdressed back up, you end up with a situation that is kind of ad hoc; it is - it's a perfectly responsible, isolated decision, but if you make a series of them, they end up random; they don't end up with coherence. And so all this appetite to kill this, or do that, or start this, my attitude is, look, we'll do it the best we can. And as I look back, I say to myself, 'Not bad.' "

  A reporter tried another question.

  "Oh, no, no. I love that ending. I - (laughter). If you think I'm going to mess that one up, you're wrong! No, sir! I'm out of here!"

  ONE OF POWELL'S greatest difficulties was that he was more or less supposed to pretend in public that the sharp differences in the war cabinet did not exist. The president would not tolerate public discord. Powell was also held in check by his own code - a soldier obeys.

  Bush might order, Go get the guns! Get my horses! - all the Texas, Alamo macho that made Powell uncomfortable. But he believed and hoped that the president knew better, that he would see the go-it-alone approach did not stand further analysis. Hopefully, the Afghan war had provided the template for that understanding.

  The ghosts in the machine were Rumsfeld and Cheney in Powell's view. Too often they went for the guns and the horses.

  IN THE SPRING of 2002 the Israeli-Palestinian conflict became so violent that it threatened to overwhelm the war on terrorism. Palestinian suicide attacks escalated. On March 27, a suicide bomber killed 29 and injured 140 at a Passover seder. Israeli Prime Minister Sharon launched a small war, dubbed Operation Defense Shield, into Palestinian-controlled areas and cities in the West Bank.

  There was a growing chorus from abroad that the U.S. had to get involved. At an NSC meeting, Bush said he wanted to send Powell to see if he could calm things down, get some peace process restarted. Powell was reluctant. He said he didn't have much to offer, too little leverage with either side. The U.S. couldn't be more desirous of peace than the parties themselves, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

  Even Rumsfeld argued that Powell should not be used just to try to stop the bleeding. The secretary of state should not just be expended, thrown into a diplomatic firefight with no positive agenda or script. Failure would be a serious blow to his prestige and to the U.S.

  We are in trouble, the president told Powell. "You're going to have to spend some political capital. You have plenty. I need you to do it."

  "Yes, sir."

  As they were walking out of the Situation Room, Bush turned to Powell. "I know how hard this is going to be but you have enough standing in the region and with the parties and just in your own situation that you can afford it."

  Powell understood this to mean, You can lose three layers of skin, you've got underlayers.

  The president was going to give a speech outlining a policy to get negotiations restarted. Arafat would have to denounce terrorism unequivocally and Sharon would have to begin to withdraw.

  Do you understand what you're saying to the Israelis? Powell asked him. You're going to have to look Sharon in the eye and say get out.

  He said he understood.

  On April 4, Bush delivered a Rose Garden speech calling on the Palestinians to end the terror. "I ask Israel to halt incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas and begin the withdrawal from those cities it has recently occupied." Powell would be going to the region the next week to seek support.

  Two days later in Crawford with Tony Blair, Bush said, "My words to Israel are the same today as they were a couple of days ago: Withdraw without delay." He later backtracked. His heart seemed to be with the Israelis.

  In the Middle East, Powell was getting rudder orders from the White House - go left, go right, correct your course so many degrees.

  First, Cheney and Rumsfeld sent word through Rice that Powell should not meet with Arafat. "Aw, Arafat, he's a spent force, leave him alone," Rumsfeld said.

  Powell knew it was ridiculous to try to negotiate without meeting with both parties. But everyone in Washington was worrying about Israel and there was mounting pressure from both Republicans and Democrats to back Sharon.

  Powell had to worry about some 300 million irate Arabs who were starting to burn cars in embassy parking lots. There were demonstrations in places where there had never been before, such as Bahrain, a bastion of pro-Americanism. Arafat and Sharon were two bad guys, Powell thought, but he couldn't ignore one. He went ahead. The first meeting with Arafat was merely okay, but a second was much worse.

 
After 10 days, having made little progress, Powell was preparing a departure statement that proposed an international conference and security negotiations.

  Rice called Armitage at the State Department to ask him to tell Powell to scale back his statement, make less of a commitment about future negotiations. There were real concerns that Powell was going too far.

  In Washington, Armitage was almost chained to his desk so he could talk to Powell between his meetings. It was midnight, 7 A.M. in Jerusalem, when Armitage explained Rice's concerns.

  Powell went nuts. Everybody wanted to grade papers! he said. No one wanted to step up, face reality! They wanted to be pro-Israel and leave him holding the Palestinian bag by himself. They had sent him out on a nearly impossible mission.

  "I'm holding back the fucking gates here," Armitage reported. "They're eating cheese on you" - an old military expression for gnawing on someone and enjoying it. People in the Defense Department and the vice president's office were trying to do him in, Armitage said. He had heard from reliable media contacts that a barrage was being unloaded on Powell. He was leaning too much to Arafat, the White House was going to trim his sails, he was going to fail. Armitage said he couldn't verify who was leaking this, but he had names of senior people in Defense and in Cheney's office.

  "That's unbelievable," Powell said. "I just heard the same thing." He had had cocktails with some reporters traveling with him and they reported that their sources in Cheney's office were declaring he had gone too far, was off the reservation, and about to be reined in.

  "People are really putting your shit in the street," Armitage said.

  Rice reached Powell and said all the others thought it was best he say nothing more, that he say he was going back to Washington to consult with the president.

  Powell, who had been engaged in a grueling shuttle, erupted. Was he just supposed to say, thank you very much for your hospitality, good-bye!

  Rice said she was worried that he was committing the president and the administration more deeply than they all wanted.

  Guess what? Powell countered. They were already in. They couldn't launch an initiative with a high-profile presidential speech like that and not expect to propose some plan or follow-up. But he agreed to trim back some on his statement.

  Rice called Armitage again. She sounded nervous. She had to do a television show on this. What was Powell doing? What's he going to say?

  He'll be fine, Armitage promised. We know the general outline. I just don't have the words because he wrote it himself.

  Powell was up until about 3 A.M. writing his remarks, knowing that he was out at the end of a long stick.

  On April 17, he made his departure statement in Jerusalem. It was 20 paragraphs of Powell at his diplomatic best - smooth, upbeat, even eloquent. He was able to dress it up and point toward a negotiated future, while avoiding mention of his failure to get a cease-fire.

  It didn't make much of a splash. He hadn't solved the Middle East problem; there was no breakthrough. But it settled some things down for the moment, and the president later thanked him.

  THE PRESIDENT DESPERATELY wanted a signed treaty with the Russians to reduce strategic nuclear weapons. He wanted it to be simple and sweeping. The agreement would be a sign of the new relationship with the Russians and demonstrate that they were no longer the primary enemy. Bush would also show he had delivered Putin.

  Rumsfeld flooded the principals with close to a dozen classified memos - often pejoratively called "Rummygrams" or "Snow-flakes" - voicing objections to a written nuclear reduction agreement with the Russians. Powell watched in some wonderment as Rumsfeld delivered a series of requests: that the treaty not be legally binding, that it not specify numbers of nuclear weapons, that it have a clause that would allow the U.S. to withdraw at a moment's notice, that it provide flexibility, that it require verification, and that smaller tactical nuclear weapons be included.

  If the Russians were now our friends, a new ally, Rumsfeld argued, why did we need a treaty? What difference would a piece of paper make?

  The answer was that the president wanted a piece of paper. Rumsfeld lost on all counts. On May 24, 2002, Bush and Putin signed the "U.S.-Russian Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions" in Moscow. It was two pages long. Both countries agreed to reduce their strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,700 to 2,200 by the year 2012. The treaty promised friendship, partnership, trust, openness and predictability.

  WHEN IT CAME to fighting terrorism, the president also wanted world leaders to equate their national interests with American interests. Some would go along with him when their interests and goals coincided roughly with his, but go their own way when they did not. Bush didn't like that when it happened and at times he took it personally.

  Earlier in the year, Bush was meeting with President Ali Ab-dallah Salih of Yemen when it became clear to him that Yemen was not with him to the extent he thought necessary. Salih was dodging. Yemen was the soft underbelly of al Qaeda action, as terrorists slipped in and out of Saudi Arabia across their shared 700-mile border. Some CIA analysis suggested that Yemen might be the place where al Qaeda would reconstitute itself.

  Yemen had given the CIA permission to fly its Predator aerial drone to track al Qaeda in a highly secret operation. But Salih was boxing up the operation, placing restrictions on it. This was the kind of divergence of interest that infuriated Bush. It suggested to him that Yemen was really against him.

  And it wasn't only Yemen. Bush wasn't getting everyone to buy into his anti-terrorist vision 100 percent. No one was going to be as committed as he. After his trip to Europe and Russia in late May 2002 the president called the NSC together.

  "We've lost our edge," he said. "I want us to remember that we have got to be on the cutting edge." There was some slacking off in his own circle, and he was not going to have it. He required a mental attitude of total focus and obsession.

  Yet the circumstances had changed. The edgy duality of life in the weeks and months after the attacks had subsided. Bush could pressure and talk, but life in the United States had increasingly returned to normal.

  THE IRAQ ISSUE heated up substantially. It was going to be the next real - and perhaps the greatest - test of Bush's leadership and the role of the United States in the world.

  Iraq carried lots of baggage. When Rice first signed up to be Bush's foreign policy adviser before the 2000 presidential campaign, she had raised the issue with him. Bush told her he disagreed with those who thought that his father had ended the war against Saddam in 1991 too quickly. At the time, Bush senior, Secretary of Defense Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Powell had all agreed to end the war after achieving the stated goal of the U.N. resolution: evicting Saddam's armies from Kuwait. The U.S. would not drive to Baghdad to oust Saddam. Chasing down the retreating Iraqi army might look like a massacre. Half of Saddam's army was destroyed. He had suffered one of the most humiliating military defeats in modern history. Surely he was finished. The CIA and various Arab leaders predicted that he would soon be deposed, that some Iraqi Army colonel or general would put a bullet in him or lead a coup.

  Saddam survived and Bush's father was defeated for reelection in 1992 by Clinton. In 1998 when Saddam shut down U.N. inspections of facilities suspected of making weapons of mass destruction, Clinton ordered Operation Desert Fox. Some 650 bomber and missile sorties were launched at Iraq over a three-day period, but Saddam would still not allow the U.N. inspectors back in.

  Still Bush defended his father and his advisers. "They did the right thing at the time," he told Rice. His father was limited by the U.N. resolution authorizing the use of force only to get Saddam out of Kuwait. She agreed and noted that often in history leaders had blundered by letting a short-term tactical success change their strategic goals. Going to Baghdad to force Saddam from power might have been an entirely different matter. Because something seemed militarily easy was not a reason to do it, she said.

  After Bush's initial decision not to att
ack Iraq immediately following the September 11 terrorist attacks, the issue had continued to percolate in the war cabinet - actively for Cheney and Rumsfeld, passively for Powell, who was not spoiling for another war.

  When the president delivered his first State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, the big headline was his declaration that Iraq, Iran and North Korea were "an axis of evil." But he had said that the real peril and potential catastrophe was the growing availability of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists or these regimes.

  Bush had considered raising this danger in his speech to Congress nine days after the terrorist attacks but he postponed, thinking such candor might be too much for the public at that time.

  "I will not wait on events," he said in the State of the Union address, hinting that he would act preemptively - a strategy that he later articulated more directly.

  AS ONE OF the first steps against Saddam, the president soon signed a new intelligence order significantly expanding the CIA covert operation to oust Saddam. He allocated $100 million to $200 million in new covert money - vastly more than the $70 million the CIA spent in Afghanistan. He increased support to the Iraqi opposition, stepped up intelligence gathering inside Iraq and prepared for possible deployment of CIA paramilitary teams and U.S. Special Forces similar to those used in Afghanistan.

  Iraq is not Afghanistan, Tenet warned the president. The Iraqi opposition was much weaker, and Saddam ran a police state. He was hard to locate, and he used decoy look-alikes. Without companion military action and other pressure, Tenet told the president, the CIA had only a 10 to 20 percent chance of succeeding.

  Bush, nonetheless, concluded that a larger covert operation would help prepare for a military strike by vastly increasing the flow of intelligence and contacts that might be needed later.

  In April, the president began publicly declaring a policy of regime change in Iraq. In June he formally declared that he would launch preemptive attacks against countries believed to be a serious threat to the United States.