The War Within (5 page)

Harvey told the president that Syria was supplying support to the insurgents in Iraq, and though it was not absolutely crucial to the insurgency, it gave them strategic depth. Former senior members of Saddam's government were based in Damascus, the Syrian capital, and were providing direction, political guidance, coordination and money.

Intelligence had traced at least $1.2 million a month of Syrian money going into Ramadi.

Charles, the CIA man, countered that the insurgency was fractious and very local, lacked coherence, and was made up of the angry, unemployed and disenfranchised. Nor did the Syrians have that much influence, he said.

Harvey began throwing out names, dates and amounts of money, saying that the intelligence showed that a certain man had left $300,000 in Ramadi, then another $250,000 in Diyala province.

"You're extrapolating too much," Charles retorted.

Harvey flashed some slides on the screen that named insurgency leaders in various provinces. "Here are their key leaders," he said.

"Here's where they assess they're doing well. Here's where they don't think they're doing well." The charts showed tribal, religious trust networks that Harvey had pieced together.

"We agree," Porter Goss, the CIA director, said unexpectedly, undercutting his own agency.

"Thank you," was all the president said, and the meeting adjourned.

* * *

In December 2004, Robert L. Grenier, the CIA's mission manager for Iraq since before the invasion, wrote a classified paper for the agency's new director, Porter Goss. Iraq was poised to hold its first election the next month, and President Bush was touting the event as a significant step on the road to democracy.

"With a month to go before elections, it's time to face facts," Grenier wrote. The Sunni insurgency was not going away, and elections were not going to fix things. The Sunnis had decided to boycott the elections. A new Shia-led government would only underscore that the Sunnis had lost power, doubtless fueling the insurgency. The result would be an increased likelihood of civil war. Already, the two branches of Islam had a violent history dating back centuries to the death of the Prophet Muhammad. The election could put them even more at odds.

Charles Allen, the CIA assistant director for intelligence collection, visited Iraq and issued a stark assessment. He said he had not been prepared for how the situation had deteriorated. He was stunned by the level of disorder and violence. Iraq was coming off the rails.

Rice summoned the NSC principals toward the end of the year to discuss both CIA reports.

But Bush would not budge. Postponement of the Iraqi elections, as the CIA was recommending, was not going to happen. "We're going to hold the election on January 30," he insisted.

* * *

On Saturday, January 8, 2005, Hadley was in his West Wing office. He was about to take over as national security adviser for Bush's second term. Rice, his former boss, was set to become secretary of state. Tall and calm, with a warm smile and large eyeglasses, Hadley had a studious, professorial look. He wore his dark suit jacket even in his own office. When he was summoned to the Oval Office about 75 paces away, jacket and tie were mandatory, even on weekends.

At the dawn of Bush's second term, so much seemed within reach. "The opportunity to spread freedom throughout the globe, and particularly in the broader Middle East and in the Muslim world," Hadley said that day, "that is, I think for the president, the defining idea of his presidencyÖit is not only a sort of moral duty, it's not only consistent with our principles, it's consistent with our interests, it's actually essential for our national securityÖ. For liberty to be secure at home, liberty has to be on the march abroad. Big stuff. Not big. Huge."

That was the mission Hadley had signed on for. As for the president, he added, "The guy's really a visionaryÖ. He defies the conventional wisdom by his boldness. He's unapologetic. He sits there and reaffirms it, and clearly almost relishes it. And, you know, it traumatizes people. And they think, 'What's he doingÖthis cowboy?'"

But it was different in the White House, Hadley said. "Those of us who are here believe in him. Believe in him and believe he has greatness in him. He has greatness in him and he could be a great president. We could use one right now."

Hadley would repeat his awe-inspired theme months later, on another Saturday morning in his office. "He's a remarkable guy," he said of Bush. He said there was a style of discourse at Cornell and Yale Law School, from which he had graduated in 1972, that was academic, long-winded and analytical, but Bush had "rejected all of that."

Bush had adopted the style of Midland, Texas, and many people think "it's simplistic, it's two-dimensional, it's not subtle."

But what Cornell, Yale and most of the country had missed, Hadley believed he had discovered. "The guy is really strong," he said, and what "people don't recognize is, everybody else needs that strength. And he understands thatÖ.

And all the rest of us need it. We're strong because he's strong."

Hadley's acceptance of Bush's ways raises some basic questions.

When I interviewed the president on August 20, 2002 for my book
Bush at War,
he mentioned a dozen times his

"instincts" or his "instinctive" reactions as guides for his decisions. "I'm not a textbook player, I'm a gut player," he said. I wrote, "His instincts are almost his second religion."

National security decision making normally requires a rigorous process of examining alternative courses of action.

But a "no doubt" president can swamp any process, not allowing much reconsideration. The president and his team had become marketers of Bush's certainty. Hadley had acceded not only to Bush's judgments but to his method. He had sidelined the analytical style of Cornell, Yale and his own experience.

A president so certain, so action-oriented, so hero-worshiped by his national security adviser, almost couldn't be halted. The administration lacked a process to examine consequences, alternatives and motives. There was no system to slow down the process so the right questions were asked and answered, or alternative courses of action seriously considered. The national security adviser has to be a negotiator and an arbiter, someone who tries to consider every angle to a problem. But Hadley had become the lawyer for the president's foreign policy, his unwavering advocate and a cheerleader for his greatness.

* * *

Throughout January 2005, the CIA kept up its dire warnings. A day before the Iraq elections, Bush slammed his briefing book shut at an Oval Office meeting when he was again warned that the outcome could be grim.

"Well," he said, "we'll see who's right."

When some 8 million Iraqis went to the polls, many waving their purple-inked fingers in the air to show they had voted, Bush hailed "the voice of freedom" coming from the Middle East. The CIA, in contrast, saw the seeds of deeper unrest and violence taking root.

* * *

On the evening of election day, January 30, 2005, Casey was about to meet with his staff in Baghdad when Rumsfeld called. He stepped into a hallway to take the call.

"George, the eyes of the world were upon you, and you stood and delivered," the secretary said.

"Well, thank you," Casey replied. "I'll pass that on to everybody."

It was a high moment, the icing on the most emotional day of Casey's time in Iraq. He felt encouraged and moved that so many Iraqis had stepped forward to take a stake in their future. He'd been saying in the run-up to the elections, "Look, millions of people are going to vote."

But Casey also felt a little disingenuous. Eighty percent of the country was Shia and Kurds. Of course they would turn out. It was the Sunnis, who had held power under Saddam and now made up the bulk of the insurgency, who had boycotted the election.

But for a fleeting moment, with his boss offering praise and the massive turnout dominating the airwaves, there was time to relax and wonder if this venture just might work.

Chapter 3

I
n early 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hired her old friend and colleague Philip Zelikow as counselor to the department. It was a normally low-profile but potentially powerful post. An intellectual with a law degree, a Ph.D. in history and a healthy ego, Zelikow had co-authored a book with Rice on German reunification after the Cold War and later served as executive director of the 9/11 Commission, which examined the terrorist attacks in detail and published a best-selling report that detailed their origins and execution.

Rice, who had little confidence that she was getting the straight story on Iraq from the military, dispatched Zelikow and a small team to assess the situation on the ground.

"If they want to send Zelikow over, he needs to look at the State stuff," Casey told Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace. "That's what's really screwed up."

Pace said it made sense that Zelikow look at everything.

"You can go anywhere you want," Casey told Zelikow when he arrived in Iraq, "and you can talk to anybody you want."

On February 10, 2005, Zelikow issued a 15-page report classified SECRET/NODISósecret, no distributionómeaning that copies should go to no one other than Rice herself. It concluded, "Iraq remains a failed state shadowed by constant violence." Zelikow made two more under-the-radar visits to Iraq, carefully weaving in some good news with a heavy dose of realism.

Rice praised Zelikow for his memos, which offered a clear conclusion: The United States didn't know what it was doing in Iraq.

* * *

Rumsfeld always worried about surprisesó"unknown unknowns," he called them. On October 11, 2005, he dashed off a SECRET snowflake to Pace, Abizaid and Casey, titled, "Intel piece on Iraq." He had read a CIA report discussing ways to preempt a possible Tet-like offensive by insurgents in Iraq.

The January 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam had been a military defeat for communist forces but had provided an overwhelming psychological victory that shocked the American public and marked a major turning point in the war.

"What do you think?" Rumsfeld asked in a one-paragraph memo to General Casey. Could insurgents in Iraq pull off a similar attack?

Casey replied, "I believe this came from work I asked CIA to do on an Iraqi Tet. The conclusion was this insurgency couldn't mount a Tet. They don't have the organization or military formations, but they don't have to. They could create the perception of a Tet with far smaller numbers because of the increased media presence."

* * *

Congress was demanding a description of what the strategy was supposed to be. Rice made it the core of her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on October 19, 2005. "Our political-military strategy," she said, "has to be clear, hold and build: to clear areas from insurgent control, to hold them securely and then build durable Iraqi institutions."

"What the hell is that?" asked Casey. He called Abizaid.

"I don't know," the central commander said.

"Did you agree to that?"

"No, I didn't agree to that."

When Rice next came to Iraq, Casey asked for a private meeting with her and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.

"Excuse me, ma'am, what's 'clear, hold, build'?"

Rice looked a little surprised. "George, that's your strategy."

"Ma'am, if it's my strategy, don't you think someone should have had the courtesy to talk to me about it before you went public with it?"

"Oh, well, we told General Odierno." A bald, towering three-star general, Raymond T. Odierno had commanded the 4th Infantry Division during the invasion and now traveled with Rice as the liaison between the military and the State Department.

"Look, ma'am, as hard as I've worked to support the State Department in this thing, the fact that that went forward without anybody talking to me, I consider a foul."

Rice repeated that she had told General Odierno, and later she apologized to Casey.

To Casey, it wasn't a simple matter of miscommunication. He didn't see "clear, hold and build" as a viable strategy. It was a bumper sticker. His main goal was to build up all Iraqi institutions so American soldiers could go home. He called Rumsfeld.

"Mr. Secretary, what's this clear, hold and build thing?"

"Oh, goddamn State DepartmentÖ" he grumbled.

Casey spoke with Zelikow. This was about more than just a slogan. "Look, Phil," he said, "this isn't professional.

This is personal. I opened this up to you. You owed me the courtesy of a call."

"WellÖ" Zelikow began.

"Bullshit! This is man-to-man. We were dealing with each other as individuals here. You owed me a call."

"George," Zelikow replied, "how could I have called you?" They both knew how paranoid Rumsfeld would be.

Rice's testimony had been sent to the Pentagon in advance and had been signed off on. But it had never found its way to Casey.

Casey's response to Zelikow was simple: "You can trust me."

Soon after Rice's statement of the strategy, Rumsfeld saw "clear, hold and build" in a draft of a speech that the president was going to give. He called Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, about a half hour before Bush was to speak.

"Take it out," he insisted. "Take it out." The "clear" was fine because that was what the U.S. military was doing. "It's up to the Iraqis to hold. And the State Department's got to work with somebody on the build."

Rumsfeld lost. The president said in a speech on October 25, "As Secretary Rice explained last week, our strategy is to clear, hold and build."

* * *

Months earlier, Casey had commissioned a report to study counterinsurgency practices and how they were, or were not, being implemented across Iraq.

On November 12, he forwarded a 15-page summary to Rumsfeld. The third page laid out traits of both successful and unsuccessful counterinsurgencies. Successful ones, Casey noted, last an average of nine years. Unsuccessful ones average 13 years.

The characteristics of a successful counterinsurgency included an emphasis on intelligence, a focus on the needs and security of citizens, an ability to deny safe haven to insurgents and isolate them from the population, and a competent local police force.