Imperial Life in the Emerald City (6 page)

To make the process appear participatory and to identify promising internals, ORHA convened a conference of about three hundred Iraqis in the Convention Center to discuss the country's future. There were tribal sheiks in gold-fringed robes, men in business suits, and even a few women. They gathered in the cavernous auditorium where, six months earlier, Saddam's deputy had announced that the Iraqi leader had been reelected with 100 percent of the vote and 100 percent turnout. For the first time in more than three decades, Iraqis were now free to speak their minds. Some called for elections to be held within weeks. Some said it was important for religious leaders to weigh in on the formation of a government. Some wanted Iraq's tribes to play a dominant role. Many simply vented about Saddam and the abuses of his henchmen. (The meeting occurred on Saddam's birthday, an irony mentioned by several of the attendees.)

As the meeting wore on, it became clear that most of the internals didn't want the exiles to be in charge. But beyond that, there was little agreement on how to form a government. There was talk of holding another meeting in a month's time to hash out the composition of a transitional government. But the Iraqis were clearly looking for guidance. Garner sat in front of the room with Zalmay Khalilzad, the White House's point man in dealing with Iraqi exiles. Neither man said much beyond his platitude-filled opening remarks. They listened impassively as their interpreters whispered what the Iraqis were saying. Finally, a sheik rose and asked Garner who would be in charge of forming a government.

“You're in charge!” Garner replied.

The crowd gasped. How could it be, they wondered, that the Americans would cede involvement in such an important question?

What Garner meant, but what he couldn't say at the time, was not that Iraqis were in charge. It was that
he
was no longer in charge.

In Washington, the White House had finally focused on the lack of a political transition plan. Garner's desire to hold elections in ninety days alarmed Rice. The State Department's reservations about putting the exiles in charge also began to resonate inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The plan all along was to have a “man of stature” take charge in Baghdad. But what would his role be? Would he be an ambassador-like figure supporting an exile-led transitional government? Or would he be more of a viceroy who would administer the country until elections or some other participatory process identified representative leaders?

Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld batted around names. Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the hero of September 11, was felt out, but the aftermath of the attacks on his city was grueling enough, and he had just opened a consulting firm. Former Massachusetts governor William Weld and former senator William Cohen were on an informal list, but the Pentagon and the vice president's office expressed concern over whether the two men, both moderate Republicans, were the “right kind of Republican.” Would they support the neoconservatives' plans for Iraq's political and economic transformation? Elder statesmen, including former secretary of state James Baker III and former Senate majority leader Bob Dole, were rejected because of their age. The list also contained several people who were not widely known but were regarded as skilled managers and loyal Republicans.

Among them was L. Paul Bremer III, who had been suggested by Cheney's office. Known to friends as Jerry—after his patron saint, Jerome—Bremer was a seasoned diplomat with strong ties to the Republican foreign-policy establishment. He had worked closely in government with two former secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig, and been ambassador to the Netherlands and the State Department's counter-terrorism czar. After leaving government in the late 1980s, he worked for Kissinger's consulting firm and an insurance company, but he remained in the Washington orbit. In 2000, he headed a congressionally appointed commission on terrorism that issued a series of prescient recommendations. After the September 11 attacks, he was named to a presidential commission on homeland security. He was a sixty-one-year-old workaholic who had a reputation as a can-do, take-charge guy—just the sort of person the White House wanted in Iraq.

The night before the conference in which Garner told the Iraqis that they were in charge, Rumsfeld called Garner with the news that Bremer had been selected by the president to head a new organization, the Coalition Provisional Authority, that would supplant ORHA. Garner kept it to himself for a week, not wanting to be seen as a lame duck. But when word began leaking out in Washington, he had to inform the rest of ORHA that he was on the way out, after less than a month in Iraq. He warned ORHA personnel that some of them also would be replaced by Bremer's new team. In the following days, he told at least three of his subordinates in private meetings that he thought he had failed. Each of them said roughly the same thing: Jay, it's not your fault. You were set up to fail.

THE GREEN ZONE, SCENE II

General Order 1 prohibited military personnel from consuming alcohol in Iraq, but it didn't apply to CPA staffers.

Drinking quickly became the most popular after-work activity. The Green Zone had no fewer than seven watering holes: the Halliburton-run sports bar in the basement of the al-Rasheed Hotel, which had a big-screen television along with its Foosball table; the CIA's rattan-furnished bar—by invitation only—which had a mirrored disco ball and a game room; the pub in the British housing complex where the beer was served warm and graffiti mocked the Americans; the rooftop bar for General Electric contractors; a trailer tavern operated by Bechtel, the engineering firm; the Green Zone Café, where you could smoke a water pipe and listen to a live Arab drummer as you drank; and the al-Rasheed's disco, which was the place to be seen on Thursday nights. A sign at the door requested patrons not to bring firearms inside. Scores of CPA staffers, including women who had had the foresight to pack hot pants and four-inch heels, danced on an illuminated Baath Party star embedded in the floor.

The atmosphere was thick with sexual tension. At the bar, there were usually ten men to every woman. With tours of duty that sometimes stretched to six months without a home leave, some with wedding rings began to refer to themselves as “operationally single.”

The guys did whatever they could to gain the attention of the gals. Before heading to the disco, soldiers changed out of their camouflage fatigues, and CPA staffers slipped off their khakis and polo shirts. The Texans wore cowboy hats and jeans. Others put on dress shirts or baggy hip-hop duds with whatever bling-bling they could find in the Green Zone Bazaar.

There were prostitutes in Baghdad, but you couldn't drive into town to get laid like in Saigon. There was a persistent rumor of a whorehouse in the Green Zone, but CPA staffers said it was a military thing. Only the soldiers knew the location, and they weren't talking.

CPA staffers were forced to do the mating dance with one another. The women led. In an e-mail to her friends back home, a staffer wrote,

         

The men, faced with a shortage of women, are eager to find a girlfriend, so that they have a reliable source of, um, companionship. The women, on the other hand, have every incentive to refuse to commit to any one man, given the vast array available to them. Some of the women clearly enjoy the attention. Others think it's skeezy (and aren't too flattered knowing that the attention is more a result of scarcity than anything else). But it is kind of fun to watch if you can keep from getting depressed.

         

The men joked about it too. They claimed to know someone who knew someone who was on a British Royal Air Force flight to Kuwait where the pilot announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we're exiting Iraqi airspace. Ladies, you are no longer beautiful.”

The most attractive women received discomfiting attention. When one fetching CPA staffer introduced herself to a man she'd never met, he smiled and said, “I know who you are. Everyone knows who all the pretty women are.”

If staffers were lucky enough to find love, or more likely, lust, finding a place to canoodle wasn't easy. Those who lived in a trailer or at the al-Rasheed had at least one roommate. Residents of the palace chapel had two hundred. Would-be lovers drove or walked to secluded parts of the Green Zone and hoped they wouldn't get caught by a military patrol. Some soldiers claimed that the safest, but perhaps least romantic, place to hook up was in the portable toilets.

4

Control Freak

OUR MOTORCADE ROARED AWAY
from the Republican Palace while most CPA staffers were still eating breakfast. In front were two tan Humvees, one with a fifty-caliber machine gun mounted on the roof, the other with a Mark-19 grenade launcher. Each had four soldiers armed with M16 rifles and nine-millimeter pistols. Two more Humvees outfitted the same way brought up the rear. In the middle rolled three GMC Suburbans. The first carried five men with arms as thick as a tank's turret, all wearing tight black T-shirts, lightweight khaki trousers, and wraparound sunglasses. They were equipped with Secret Service–style earpieces, M4 automatic rifles, and Kevlar flak vests with ceramic plates strong enough to stop a bullet from an AK-47. They bore no insignia and kept their identification badges tucked into their flak vests. All of them were ex–Navy SEALs working for a private security contractor called Blackwater USA. They had but one job: protect the viceroy.

I rode with Jerry Bremer in the second Suburban, a custom-built, twelve-cylinder version of the popular American sport utility vehicle, with half-inch-thick bulletproof windows and steel-plated doors that could withstand even a rocket-propelled grenade. Bremer sat in the middle row, next to Dorothy Mazaka, the senior adviser for primary and secondary schools. Two Blackwater guards were up front. I was in the rear, with Bremer's press adviser. The third Suburban contained three television cameramen and two still photographers meant to record Bremer's foray out of the Green Zone.

Bremer was pressed and peppy. Every steel gray hair on his head was in place. He had awoken at five that morning to jog three miles in the palace garden. After showering and donning his uniform—a navy pinstripe suit with a pocket square, a crisp white shirt, a red tie, and tan combat boots—he dropped into the mess hall for a quick breakfast before going to his office to read the overnight cable traffic, the morning news clippings, and the day's agenda. At eight, he met with his staff in one of Saddam's gilded conference rooms. It was a no-nonsense affair. Participants were encouraged to make their points in thirty seconds or less. Decisions were made as swiftly.

Our first stop of the morning was at an elementary school in southwestern Baghdad. It was June 2003. Bremer had arrived less than a month earlier, and he was keen to demonstrate to Iraqis and Americans that he was no Jay Garner. The way to do that, Bremer and his advisers figured, was to be out and about, in front of the cameras, with the air of a head of state. There were daily photo opportunities and weekly press conferences. There were barnstorming visits across the country in his Black Hawk helicopter. A United Nations Security Council resolution had granted the United States broad occupation power, and President Bush had delegated much of that power to Bremer. He was the boss.

The school visit was another photo op, but it was also a chance to show Iraqis that the occupation authority cared about their needs. Iraqis value education more than almost anything else, and Bremer hoped that a pledge to help fix decrepit schools would persuade ambivalent Iraqis to support the CPA.

The school had two adjoining campuses built in a square, one for boys and the other for girls, with a courtyard in the middle. Mazaka had carefully selected the venue. Saddam's government had stored weapons in one of the classrooms during the American shock-and-awe campaign. The headmistress of the girls' campus supported the American invasion. There was no electricity or running water in either campus. Students relieved themselves behind the building.

“
Salaam alaikum,
” Bremer said as he entered the courtyard. Peace be upon you.

“
Alaikum salaam
,” the teachers replied. And upon you be peace.

The headmistress took Bremer on a tour of the girls' campus. Her 635 students had to be taught in two shifts because there were not enough desks. She showed Bremer several rooms with no lights, fans, or chalk for the blackboard. After the camera crews had finished filming, the CPA team churned out the sound bites.

“Engineers will visit in the next few weeks to work with you to rehabilitate the school,” Mazaka said.

“We are committed to helping you,” Bremer added.

Then we walked to the boys' campus. Bremer strolled into a classroom of fifteen young boys, none of whom spoke English. The cameramen followed behind.

“We are working to be sure the school is completely renovated,” Bremer said. Curriculum revision was a “matter for Iraqis to decide,” but he promised that paeans to Saddam would be expunged. An interpreter was summoned. “What's your favorite sport?” Bremer asked the kids. Soccer, one boy said. “Well, we'll bring you some soccer balls in a few days,” Bremer said with a flourish. He turned to one of his aides. He said nothing, but his look conveyed the message.
Get someone to get some soccer balls down here pronto!

By the time he walked out of the classroom, word had gotten out in the neighborhood that the viceroy was there. Hundreds of people crowded around the campus.

“Please help us,” one woman shouted in broken English as she gripped the arm of her son. “We are very worried about security. There are people kidnapping our children.”

“Security is a big problem,” another woman said. “We are scared.”

Bremer walked up to the women. “We understand your concerns,” he said. “We are working very hard to restore security. We're arresting people every day.”

The women nodded, but the crowd didn't give up. Several teachers joined in the questioning.

“Can we have security around the school during the exams?” one asked.

“We'll talk to the military about that,” he said.

“Please, mister,” another teacher yelled. “We want to be paid.”

“We're paying salaries as fast as we can,” he said.

Bremer's guards hustled him back into the Suburban. “Good luck,” he said as the door closed.

“
Inshallah,
” the headmistress replied.

As we sped off, I asked Bremer if, given the continuing looting, he thought there were enough American troops in Baghdad. Bremer would later write in his book
My Year in Iraq
that in May 2003 he sent Rumsfeld a copy of a draft report by the Rand Corporation, a military-affiliated think tank, that estimated that five hundred thousand troops were needed to stabilize Iraq—more than three times the number of foreign forces then in the country. According to Bremer, Rumsfeld did not respond. Bremer also wrote that he raised his concerns with President Bush at a lunch that month, and again in June in a video link with a National Security Council meeting chaired by Bush. But Bremer never acknowledged these efforts when queried by journalists about force levels at the time.

“I think we've got as many soldiers as we need here right now,” he told me. The problem, in his view, was getting Iraqi police officers back on the job. Many still had not reported to their stations.

“You know, it's Saddam who's responsible for this problem,” he said. “He released tens of thousands of criminals from prison before the war.” But Bremer suggested that they alone were not responsible for the looting; it was a communal reaction to the repression. “When you get here and you see the rage and the pain on people's faces, it's very clear how very evil the old regime was.”

“What's your top priority?” I asked.

Economic reform, he said. He had a three-step plan. The first was to restore electricity, water, and other basic services. The second was to put “liquidity in the hands of people”—reopening banks, offering loans, paying salaries. The third was to “corporatize and privatize state-owned enterprises,” and to “wean people from the idea the state supports everything.” Saddam's government owned hundreds of factories. It subsidized the cost of gasoline, electricity, and fertilizer. Every family received monthly food rations. Bremer regarded all of that as unsustainable, as too socialist. “It's going to be a very wrenching, painful process, as it was in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall,” he said.

“But won't that be very complicated and controversial?” I asked. “Why not leave it up to the Iraqis?”

Bremer had come to Iraq to build not just a democracy but a free market. He insisted that economic reform and political reform were intertwined. “If we don't get their economy right, no matter how fancy our political transformation, it won't work,” he said.

As we talked, I was struck by his zeal to help the people of Iraq. While Washington remained focused on Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction and the human rights abuses of his government, Bremer's emphasis on the future was refreshing. I wondered if his aspirations would change once he heard from more Iraqis, or if he would demonstrate a missionary's unshakable commitment to doctrine from the home country, but those thoughts were soon eclipsed by the viceroy's vision of a new Iraq. It sounded like he wanted America to be as ambitious in Iraq as it had been in Germany and Japan after World War II. After fifteen minutes of conversation, I found myself believing in Bremer.

By then, we had arrived at Baghdad University, a sprawling campus of fifty thousand students on the eastern side of the Tigris River. Bremer was there for a meeting with the deans. Like the elementary school teachers, they complained about security. They also griped about a Saddam-era regulation that prevented professors and deans from traveling abroad. Saddam had been afraid they'd never return. Bremer listened intently. This was something he could fix.

The next day, he issued Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 8.

         

Any statute, regulation, instruction or policy of the former Iraqi government that imposes restrictions or procedures on faculty, employees or students of public universities, colleges or other institutions of higher education who desire to travel abroad for educational purposes is hereby rescinded.

         

As the viceroy, Bremer need only put down his signature to impose a new law, or to abolish an old one. He wasn't required to consult with Iraqis or even seek their consent. “As long as we're here, we are the occupying power,” he said as we drove back to the Green Zone. “It's a very ugly word, but it's true.”

As we pulled up to the palace, I asked Bremer if he saw himself as another General Douglas MacArthur, the obsessive, all-powerful American ruler of Japan for three years after World War II.

“I'm not MacArthur,” he said as he exited the Suburban. “I'm not going to be anybody but myself.”

         

Shortly after Bremer arrived in Baghdad, Henry Kissinger dropped by to see Colin Powell in his vast, wood-paneled office at the State Department. Kissinger, who had been secretary of state in the 1970s, visited Powell occasionally for wide-ranging chats. The conversation that day soon turned to Iraq, and Powell asked Kissinger about Bremer's management style. Bremer had spent fifteen years working for Kissinger, as his special assistant when he was secretary and then as a managing director of Kissinger's consulting firm.

“He's a control freak,” Kissinger replied.

Powell snorted grimly. If Kissinger, a legendary micromanager, thought Bremer was one too, then Bremer had to be a control freak without parallel.

Over at the White House, Rice and her deputy, Steven Hadley, had come to a similar conclusion. In his Oval Office interview with President Bush, Bremer had made it clear that he wanted complete control of the reconstruction and governance of Iraq. He didn't want Washington, as he would say later, to micromanage policy “with an eight-thousand-mile screwdriver.”

A few weeks after he landed in Iraq, Bremer informed Hadley that he didn't want to subject his decisions to the “inter-agency process,” a bureaucratic safety valve that allowed the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSC to review and comment on policies. Bremer said he couldn't wait around for approval from the home office. Rice and Hadley were reluctant to remove Bremer's very long leash, but he was the man on the ground. And after the Garner debacle, the White House wanted a take-charge guy. All right, Hadley told him, you don't have to go through the interagency process. But make sure you run the big stuff by us first.

Bremer told confidants in Baghdad he didn't want to “deal with the Washington squirrel cage.” He was a presidential appointee who reported to the president through the secretary of defense. He had no obligation to answer to anyone else. When Paul Wolfowitz or Doug Feith sent messages to him, Bremer directed his deputies to respond.

If Washington wanted something from Bremer's underlings, the request had to be approved by Bremer himself. The rule even applied to queries from the White House. Bremer's executive assistant, Jessica LeCroy, dispatched an e-mail to every senior adviser titled, “CPA Senior Advisors May Not Accept Taskings Directly from the NSC/Inter-agency Process.”

Bremer didn't view the palace as an American embassy that had a responsibility to report developments on the ground to the State Department and the NSC. He gave his updates directly to the president and Rumsfeld in a weekly video teleconference. Although Powell and Rice usually participated in the calls, they and their staffs yearned for more information. Powell's aides quietly encouraged State personnel working for the CPA to write back-channel memos to the State Department. To avoid detection, the authors used personal Hotmail and Yahoo e-mail accounts to send their dispatches. At the NSC, one of Rice's senior deputies began checking the CPA's Web site every day to see what new orders Bremer had issued. It was faster than waiting to receive reports through official channels.

In his first several months in Baghdad, Bremer had no formal deputy. Although he brought along three veteran diplomats to serve as advisers—one of them, retired ambassador Clayton McManaway, was an old friend, and another, Hume Horan, was one of the State Department's foremost Arabists—their roles were soon eclipsed by a coterie of sycophantic young aides who rarely challenged Bremer's decisions. Most of them had never worked in government before, and those who had were too junior to be beholden to anyone back home. They had no preconceived notions other than an unfailing belief in building a democratic Iraq, and their only loyalty was to the viceroy.