Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (7 page)

1. There should be a significant augmentation of U.S. troop levels (from outside Iraq) for a specific period of time to clear and hold [provide a sustained secure environment in] Baghdad and give the Iraqi army time to establish itself in these areas. Probably 25,000–40,000 troops would be needed for up to six months.

2. Prior to the deployment, clear benchmarks should be established for the Iraqi government to meet during the time of the augmentation, from national reconciliation to revenue sharing, etc. It should be made quite clear to the Iraqi government that the augmentation period is of specific length and that success in meeting the benchmarks will determine the timetable for withdrawal of the base force subsequent to the temporary augmentation.

My other recommendations—based on everything I had heard in Washington and Baghdad—were to convene a regional conference, including both the Syrians and the Iranians, to discuss the stabilization of, and aid to, Iraq, as well as a “high-visibility” return of the United States to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Both of these moves would be intended to create a more favorable political climate in the Middle East for us and perhaps improve the political environment in Baghdad. I also recommended the appointment of a “very senior” person by the president, resident in the White House, to coordinate all aid and reconstruction efforts in Iraq, reflecting my sense that there was too little coordination and integration of effort on the civilian side of the U.S. war effort. Finally, I proposed that we stop rotating officers at the battalion commander level and above in Iraq for the duration of the surge and that the State Department fill its open positions in Iraq, with involuntary assignments if necessary; both measures I thought were necessary to address the too-rapid turnover of American military officers with experience in Iraq and the insufficient number of civilians.

By mid-October, the only three members of the ISG to put their personal recommendations on paper—two Democrats and one Republican—had gone on record that a surge of U.S. forces from outside Iraq was needed to stabilize the situation in Baghdad, which in turn was critical to
our success in Iraq. Yet when the group’s recommendations were drafted in mid-November, there would be no mention whatsoever of a surge or augmentation of U.S. forces in Iraq in the executive summary of the report. Indeed, only on page seventy-three of the ninety-six-page report was it said that the group could support a short-term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad, or to speed up the training and equipping mission.

I have never discussed this outcome with my former colleagues on the ISG but can only speculate that the Democrats’ winning control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections, and the desire for unanimity to make the report more politically potent, resulted in relegating a recommended surge of U.S. troops to the distant background. I was disappointed in this outcome.

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Despite the president’s always-confident public posture, by spring 2006 I believe he already knew the strategy in Iraq was not working. Generals Casey and Abizaid had been focused throughout most of 2006 on transitioning security responsibility to the Iraqis, and earlier in the year Casey had said he hoped to reduce the U.S. presence from fifteen brigade combat teams to ten by the end of 2006. (Combat brigades average about 3,500 soldiers, plus a significant number of others in support, including logistics, communications, intelligence, and helicopters.) Declining security after the Samarra bombing had made such reductions untenable, but a big part of the continuing military resistance to more U.S. forces was the belief that their very presence, as targets, worsened the security situation, and that the more the United States did, the less the Iraqis would do. The commanders were set on transition.

Meanwhile, in Washington, by late summer, despite the rhetoric of success, there were at least three major reviews of Iraq strategy under way inside the administration. The principal one was being done by Steve Hadley and the NSC staff; the others were at the Department of State, by Secretary Rice’s counselor Philip Zelikow, and at the Pentagon, under the auspices of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pete Pace.

After confirmation, though not yet sworn in, I first spoke my mind during a private breakfast on December 12 with the president and Hadley in a small dining room adjacent to the Oval Office. I said the president
needed to send a message to Maliki that we had reached a decisive moment, a watershed for both countries’ leaders: “This is the time. What kind of country do you want? Do you want a country? Chaos is the alternative.” I said we needed to force the issue in Baghdad: Could Maliki deliver and, if he couldn’t, then who could? I said that our people in Baghdad were too bullish; they said there was “some reduction in sectarian violence,” but it was like the tide, coming and going and coming back again. What’s the follow-on economically and politically? I asked. I said that Syria and Iran needed to be made to understand that there is a price to pay for helping our enemies in Iraq. I suggested the Saudis had to get into the game, too: they said they were worried but they took no action. Finally, I asked what would happen if a surge failed. “What’s Chapter 2?”

We had been discussing when Bush might make a speech if he decided to change the strategy and order a surge. He had decided to hold off until I was sworn in and could go to Iraq as secretary and return with my recommendations. I urged that he not let events drive the date of the speech. If he was not ready, then he should delay. “Better a tactical delay than a strategic mistake,” I said.

On December 13, the president came to the Pentagon to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in their conference room, long dubbed “the Tank.” The vice president, Don Rumsfeld, and I were there. I said little at the meeting because Rumsfeld was still the secretary and spoke for the Department of Defense. But the meeting offered me a good chance to get a feel for the chemistry in the room among the principal players, and for how the president conducted meetings. The session also gave me a chance to observe the chiefs and their interactions with Bush and Cheney. Bush raised the idea of more troops going to Iraq. All of the chiefs unloaded on him, not only questioning the value of the additional forces but expressing concern about the impact on the military if asked to send thousands more troops. They worried about “breaking the force” through repeated deployments and about the impact on military families. They indicated that tour lengths in Iraq would need to be lengthened to sustain a larger force.

I was struck in the meeting by the service chiefs’ seeming detachment from the wars we were in and their focus on future contingencies and stress on the force. Not one uttered a single sentence on the need for us to win in Iraq. It was my first glimpse of one of the biggest challenges I would face throughout my time as secretary—getting those whose
offices were in the Pentagon to give priority to the overseas battlefields. Bush heard them out respectfully but at the end simply said, “The surest way to break the force is to lose in Iraq.” I would have to deal with all the legitimate issues the chiefs raised that day, but I agreed totally with the president.

I couldn’t help but reflect on an e-mail I had seen a year or so earlier at Texas A&M from an Aggie deployed in Iraq. He had written that, sure, he and his buddies wanted to come home—but not until the mission was completed and they could make certain that their friends’ sacrifices would not be in vain. I thought that young officer would also have agreed with the president.

Hadley and I subsequently had a long telephone conversation on December 16 in preparation for my trip to Iraq. He said I would report to the president on the trip on December 23, and then the national security team would meet at the ranch in Crawford on December 28 to decide the way ahead. He went through the proposed agenda for the Crawford meeting. It was all about a surge, and the strategy for Baghdad. Did Casey have the resources to provide sustained protection for the Iraqis in Baghdad, and did he understand that the surge was “a bridge to buy time and space for the Iraqi government to stand up”? Could we surge both in Anbar province—where Sunni sheikhs were beginning to stand up to al Qaeda and the insurgency because of their wanton viciousness—and in Baghdad, or could we handle Anbar with special forces and Sunni tribes willing to work with us? How would we describe the broader transition strategy—security, training, or both? If we embedded our forces with Iraqi units, would it reduce the number of U.S. troops in the fight?

On December 19, the day after I was sworn in, I talked with David Petraeus. I wanted to pick the brain of the Army’s most senior expert on counterinsurgency. I also wanted to get better acquainted with the leading candidate to replace George Casey. I asked him what I should look for in Iraq, what questions I should ask. Fundamentally, he said, the question was whether our priority was security for the Iraqi people or transition to Iraqi security forces. We probably couldn’t do the latter until we had improved the former.

A few hours later I departed on my first trip to Iraq as secretary. I was accompanied by Pete Pace and by Eric Edelman, the undersecretary of defense for policy. Going to Iraq as secretary of defense was quite different
than going as a member of a study group. For security purposes, I flew in a military cargo plane, but inside the vast hold was a sort of large silver Airstream trailer—a capsule nicknamed the “Silver Bullet”—for me and a handful of others. I had a small cabin to myself with a desk and a sofa that folded out into a bed. The bathroom was so small you could not use it with the door closed. There was a middle section with a desk and seat for a staff member, and a small refrigerator, and another section where two or three additional people could sit. It was tight quarters for a twelve-hour flight but significantly better than the seats out in the cargo bay, and a lot quieter as well. Still, because there were no windows in the plane, it was a lot like being FedExed halfway around the world.

Upon arrival in Baghdad, I was met by Generals Abizaid and Casey and helicoptered to Camp Victory, a huge complex that included the Al Faw palace, our military headquarters, and the Joint Visitors Bureau (JVB). The JVB guesthouse was another of Saddam’s palaces and was ornately decorated in what I would call “early dictator,” with huge furniture and a lot of gold leaf. My bedroom was roughly the size of a basketball court and featured a huge chandelier. The bathroom was long on ornamentation and short on plumbing. I would stay at the JVB many times, and after the National Guard took over its management, living conditions would improve. Still, the relative plushness made me uneasy because I knew what kind of conditions our troops were enduring. My staff and I had no cause to complain—ever.

I spent a lot of my two and a half days in Iraq with our commanders. It was during this trip that I would first meet several of the Army’s warrior generals I would come to know, respect, and promote in the years to come, including Lieutenant Generals Ray Odierno, Stan McChrystal, and Marty Dempsey.

I had lengthy meetings and meals with all of the senior Iraqi government officials. These conversations were much more productive than what I had experienced when visiting as a member of the Study Group, which was not surprising, given how important I had become to their future.

I began a practice on this first trip that I would continue on all future visits to Iraq and Afghanistan, and also at every military facility and unit I would visit as secretary—I had a meal with troops, usually a dozen or so, either young officers (lieutenants and captains), junior enlisted, or
middle-level noncommissioned officers. They were surprisingly candid with me—partly because I would not allow any of their commanders in the room—and I always learned a lot.

As I prepared to fly from Baghdad to Mosul, I gave my first press conference in Iraq, outdoors in front of the JVB. What I said probably had less of an impact on the reporters than the racket made by a firefight going on in the background.

On the flight back to Washington, I prepared to meet with the president the next morning at Camp David. I told him then that I had promised the Senate to listen on this trip to our senior commanders, and I had. Their central theme was still the transitioning of security responsibility to the Iraqis. I said I thought that we were at a “pivot point” in Iraq, that the emerging Iraqi plan being worked on by Casey looked like a turning point in terms of the Iraqis wanting to take leadership on security with strong U.S. support. From extensive discussions with the commanders, I said, it was clear to me that there was broad agreement from Abizaid on down on a “highly targeted, modest increase” of up to two brigades in support of operations in Baghdad, contingent on a commensurate increase in U.S. civilian and economic assistance. The incremental increase would be designed to prolong “holding” operations long enough for the Iraqis to get nine more brigades fully in place in Baghdad and start gaining control of the situation on the ground.

With regard to Anbar province, where the sheikhs had come on board, I reported that our commanders believed they had made significant progress. Abizaid had told me that Marine commander Major General Rick Zilmer was “kicking the crap out of al Qaeda” there. Both Odierno and Zilmer believed that two more Marine battalions in Anbar would allow them to build on their success. However, I said, Casey was not persuaded of the need for an increase in troops in Anbar, and the province seemingly was of no importance to Maliki. Casey’s view was that enduring success required more Iraqi security forces and an Iraqi government presence. He said he would continue to work the issue with Odierno.

Maliki was a major problem, I told the president. In my private conversation with him, he had been “very queasy” about any surge. He had warned me that an influx of U.S. troops seemed counter to Iraqi expectations of reduced troop numbers and would make the coalition forces an even bigger target for terrorists. Both Casey and Odierno thought they
could get Maliki to buy in, perhaps agreeing to one additional brigade by January 15 to support Baghdad security operations, with a second brigade moving to Kuwait by February 15 to reconstitute a U.S. reserve force. I suggested to the president that the key to addressing Maliki’s reluctance would be to couple his strong desire to have the Iraqis take the lead with the necessity that they not fail. Our commanders were concerned that the Iraqis, while eager to lead, might not be able to successfully carry out the operation. Odierno, clearly more pessimistic than Casey about potential Iraqi performance, had warned me regarding Casey’s plan, “There is no guarantee of success,” and that it was crucial to follow up clearing operations with a prolonged and effective “hold” period, coupled with an immediate infusion of job-creating economic assistance.