The War Within (17 page)

"Otherwise, you have to create a security force" of army and police so big that we set up "the creation of another strongman" like Saddam.

Well, Baker asked, isn't chaos worse than having a large security force?

"We have taken the Iraqi army as far as it can go," Chiarelli said, "without the support of its own government." The Shia and Sunnis have to learn how to govern together, he added. Reconciliation held the key to success.

Gates's question was one he asked frequently: What about the consequences of catastrophe in Iraq? Leading the witness, he said he thought the geopolitical implications of failure in Iraq far exceeded those of failure in Vietnam.

"The comparisons of strategic importance are not even close," Chiarelli agreed. "Iraq is a war of the future, and you have to understand the nonkinetic aspects, which are more important than the use of force."

Chiarelli reiterated the quality-of-life issues, which he felt were central to success. He had seen the practical benefits of "full-spectrum operations," meaning that his soldiers didn't stick only to typical infantry tasks but also worked on civil projectsówater and sewer lines, restoring electricity, opening schoolsóthat won favor with the population. The unemployment problem, perhaps as high as 40 percent, was a threat to his soldiers, Chiarelli said. Conversely, when his men had studied the municipal water supply systems and solved some of the water problems in Baghdad, it had a noticeable impact.

He said that Moqtada al-Sadr had built his support in part by controlling key ministries such as transportation, health and agriculture. Chiarelli knew that game well: Control the services, control the people.

After the general left, the members commented on how direct and impressive he had been. Baker and Hamilton wondered aloud if they should recommend to President Bush that Chiarelli be given a fourth star and Casey's job.

Bill Perry later took Chiarelli aside privately. The administration and Pentagon line was that they did not need more troops. But Perry wanted the straight scoop from a commander on the ground.

"This isn't working," Perry told Chiarelli, noting that the two Together Forward operations had failed to secure Baghdad.

Chiarelli agreed.

"If I were the secretary of defense," Perry said, "and I were to come over here and look at the situation, I would say this isn't working and we don't have much more time. Politically, time is running out on us. So I'm willing to give you another four or five brigades to secure Baghdad. First of all, would that help?"

"No," Chiarelli replied, Perry recalled.

"I'm prepared to do it. What's your answer?" Perry pressed.

"No," Chiarelli said. "Unequivocally, no."

"And then he gave me a long list of reasons," Perry said. The list boiled down to the fact that this was not a military problem but rather a political one, and it must be solved by the Iraqisótheir people, their army and their policeóand not by the U.S. military.

Leon Panetta recalled that Chiarelli told the group, "We're not going to win this thing militarily. We're only going to win it when we provide jobs to people, when we meet their basic needs, when we clean the trash up, when we deliver water, when we deliver electricity. Until we do that, we're fighting a losing war."

Chapter 12

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ext, the study group met with Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, who was in charge of training the Iraq army, and Major General Joseph Peterson, who commanded the units training Iraqi police.

Dempsey said they had trained the targeted number of Iraqi military, but without national reconciliation it was useless. "If they don't make that progress by the end of the year," he said, "there are not enough troops in the world to provide security."

Peterson struck a different tone.

"The widespread pessimism about the police is unwarranted," he said. "So many people in the media and elsewhere emphasize the bad and overlook the good. Today in Iraq, the police are standing up and fighting. They are doing a lot of good in a lot of places."

This contradicted almost everything the group had heard about the police, including from the CIA station chief, who had told them the day before that their ministry ran death squads and torture facilities.

The study group members had come to the small conference room within the embassy dressed in suits, a show of respect toward Iraqis. As General Peterson was finishing, the door burst open, and in rushed Chuck Robb, in shirtsleeves. Normally reserved, Robb was steaming. He had ventured out into Baghdad and was dumbfounded by how much support the U.S. military had to provide to one of the Iraqi army's "showcase" units.

"Everything that is happening under the Baghdad security plan is because of the American military and the Iraqi army, not the police," Robb said. He said a full U.S. Army company made up of several hundred soldiers was assigned to each neighborhood. "The police are not the disciplined group we are looking for."

Robb said he had talked with several ordinary Iraqis on the street and asked: Who would you pass tips along to if you knew about insurgents or terrorists or wrongdoing? "They said, 'The Americans. Not the Iraqi police,'" Robb reported.

General Peterson, his positive tale of progress suddenly undermined, said that U.S. forces hadn't finished clearing that particular neighborhood. After the clearing, the Iraqis would stand and hold it.

Robb shook his head no. He wasn't buying it. This was the military's showcase neighborhood and its showcase Iraqi unit, and all he had seen were American soldiers leading the way.

* * *

The study group members headed across the Green Zone to interview Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

Hakim, head of the powerful Shia party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, had not been on the original interview list. But everyone kept mentioning how influential he was, how he and Moqtada al-Sadr were the real Shia power players, though neither had an official role in the government.

At Hakim's palace in the Green Zone, they found the cleric dressed in a black robe and black turban. He was serene and soft-spoken and served the group tea and orange juice. However, they did not feel welcomed as warmly as they had been by other Iraqis.

"Some want to return to the old regime," Hakim told the group. "They include Baathists, Saddamists and those who accuse us [Shia] of being infidels. The Baathists do not accept change. They resort to attacking the infrastructure.

One of their first acts was to kill my brother." His older brother, Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, a founder of SCIRI, had returned to Iraq after the invasion in 2003, only to be killed by a massive car bomb in August of that year. At least six of his other brothers had been killed under Saddam Hussein.

"Other states in the region want to turn back to the former regime," Hakim said. "They want the American project to fail.

"Some thought they could cure the violence by bringing the Sunnis into the political process. The problem is not the Sunnis. We want to live with them. The problem is the Saddamists"óthose still loyal to the former dictator.

He added that "the steps adopted by America did not reduce, but increased, the terrorists."

Hakim clearly had little interest in national reconciliation, which the group had been told time and again was the key to success.

"The government is the strongest in the region," he insisted. "It has a wide popular base. Eighty percent of the people support it." He didn't mention that the 20 percent who didn't support it were the Sunnis. Essentially, he was saying that the Shia and Kurdish majorities supported the government, so who cared what the Sunnis thought?

"Even though we have problems, we are moving forward," Hakim said. "If one tenth of these problems had happened in Europe, the government would fall."

Hamilton pressed Hakim on national reconciliation.

"Of course we support this process," Hakim said. "But to speak frankly, we must ask, 'Reconciliation with whom?'

With Saddamists, with Takfiri, or whom?"óby Takfiri, he was referring to a radical strain of jihadists who believe in taking action against those deemed to be infidelsó"If it is with those who have killed us for 35 years, the Iraqi people will keep fighting themÖ. We have held a conference on national reconciliation. We will hold additional conferences. But will they stop the violence?"

Not only did Hakim display no sense of urgency, he seemed to see no problem with the sectarian rifts in the countryónot entirely surprising for a man leading the majority party.

Hakim sat in a corner chair next to Hamilton and Baker. The vice president of Iraq, the finance minister and the national reconciliation minister sat next to him like quiet, subservient schoolchildren. It sent a clear message about who was in charge.

Also seated next to Hakim in robes and a turban was a man named Humam Hammoudi. He would oversee a committee reviewing the Iraqi constitution, meaning Hakim would have a large say in the new constitution.

Baker asked Hakim if he stood by the Iraqi government. He said he did. Hammoudi interjected, "All Shias support the government." It was a clear swipe at the lack of Sunni participation.

Hamilton and Baker stopped asking questions and started offering advice to Hakim, almost scolding him, and urging him to embrace national unity.

"Eighty percent is an extraordinary political base," Hamilton told him. "As an American politician, what that says to me is that the government should move very rapidly on national reconciliation because you've got such a good political base."

"The moves of this government are very limited. That is just reality," Hakim replied.

"It is not hard to blow this country apart. To keep the country together takes extraordinary leadership," Hamilton said, hoping to appeal to Hakim's vanity.

Later, Hammoudi observed that the questions the group members were asking gave an impression that they believed national reconciliation was the most important step. He said, "The Shia are unified. The Shia have only one enemy"órepeating Hakim's lineó"the Saddamists and the Takfiri." He said reconciliation would not stop the violence, implying that only eliminating the Sunnis would.

Baker didn't give up. He asked about the militias.

Hakim said there were four kinds of militias: 1) Those who had fought Saddamóthe "good" militias. 2) The facilities protection service, a kind of private army for each ministry, which Bremer and the Americans had created. 3) Shia and Sunni militias that people had formed to defend themselves. He said those could be turned into "neighborhood defense committees." 4) Saddamists, Takfiri and the like. "Those, we must confront," Hakim said.

"Time is of the essence for the Iraqi people and the American people," Baker said. He called for movement on quelling the militias and on creating national reconciliation. "It is early in the new government, but we are at a critical time."

The group left the meeting despondent, less certain than ever that reconciliation could become reality. It was one of their last interviews in Iraq, a sour note on which to leave.

Hamilton looked around and thought, "There isn't an optimist among us."

* * *

On the long flight back, Gates and Panetta tried to address the question "Where are we headed?"

"I have a very real concern that the Iraqis may not have the ability to govern themselves, may not have the ability to implement the reforms that are necessary," Panetta said. "If they don't, if they can't, then what the hell is our option?

What do we do? What's plan B?"

Baker said that he had recently talked to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who said that Iraqólike Egyptóneeded a strongman who could get things done. "Maybe," Baker joked darkly, "Plan B is bringing Saddam back."

The others pressed Baker on whether President Bush was going to listen to the group's recommendations.

"I wouldn't be doing this," Baker replied, "unless I thought he would be willing to listen and do it." The president might not agree with everything they would recommend, Baker added, but from a political point of view he might have to go along in order to save his ass.

"Where is the central authority for dealing with politics in Iraq?" Panetta asked. He knew from his experience as President Clinton's chief of staff that someone in the White House had to take charge of such issues. But the Bush administration seemed to have no such authority. "Who controls policy there? Is it Hadley? Is it Rice? Is it Rumsfeld? Is it the National Security Council?"

The others agreed it was an important question. Panetta tried to get an answer but never did.

* * *

On September 5, President Bush addressed the Military Officers Association of America. Hours earlier, the White House had released an updated version of the administration's "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism." The 29-page document described successes in the "war on terrorism" and warned that the nation faced evolving terrorist threats over the long term. It argued that Bush's idea of spreading freedom and democracy offered the best remedy for worldwide terrorism. The document was long on goals and vague on how to accomplish them.

"We're on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront," Bush said that day, "and we'll accept nothing less than complete victory."

He cited the successful December 2005 elections in Iraq and the killing of Zarqawi in June. He said that the country's new unity government was another sign of progress.

"If we retreat from Iraq," he said, "if we don't uphold our duty to support those who are desirous to live in liberty, 50

years from now, history will look back at our time with unforgiving clarity and demand to know why we did not act."

* * *

On September 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the president gave an evening address to the nation. He cited the brutality of the attacks as the reason why leaving Iraq was not the right path. The events of 9/11 remained a guiding star for Bushóa constant reminder that the war in Iraq, with its immense political and security problems, was nevertheless a necessary and righteous endeavor.

"Our nation is being tested in a way that we have not been since the start of the Cold War. We saw what a handful of our enemies can do with box cutters and plane tickets," Bush said. "Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone."