The War Within Page 5

  Casey mentioned a U.S. operation taking place in Baghdad named Scales of Justice. It had had some effect, but they were short on Iraqi police. The Sadr militias were operating as death squads and were responsible for much of the violence. Some Sadr militiamen had been caught in Iraqi army uniforms.

  Casey said Maliki seemed eager to help with the problems and had offered to do what he could.

  "Who are they going after?" Cheney asked, referring to the death squads.

  It's not random, Casey said. He had seen lists of targets, primarily Sunnis being hunted down by Shia.

  "This sounds political, not criminal," the president noted, and Casey agreed.

  The president asked about the persistent problem of IEDs, which continued to kill and maim soldiers at an appalling rate. "Who is behind it?"

  Casey emphasized that in recent months there had been an increase in the use of EFPsóexplosively formed projectilesóin the Shia areas. He said the technology was coming from Iran and that it was especially lethal.

  What's the motive in planting the IEDs, the president asked. What's the goal?

  "Well, ultimately, for us to leave," Casey said, "although some of this is now violence for violence's sake to pressure the political process."

  Bush said he was astonished by the volume of the attacks and wondered if there was any kind of command structure in which a few people could give the order to stop it. Casey said that if there was a structure, it was very loose.

  Would the IED problem be as significant without the U.S. presence? Bush asked. Well, they would still want to hit Iraqi forces, Casey said. But at the moment, the Americans were the targets of two thirds of the attacks.

  Chapter 4

  Frustrated by the lack of progress, Congress had created the bipartisan Iraq Study Group to assess independently the situation in Iraq and provide policy recommendations to the president. The White House offered reluctant support.

  The group's members were the old set. Its co-chairs were Republican James A. Baker III, the 77-year-old former secretary of state and political consigliere for President George H. W. Bush, and Democrat Lee Hamilton, 76, who had served in the House for 34 years, chaired the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and seemed to have been on every blue-ribbon commission since the Vietnam War.

  Other Republicans included former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, President Ronald Reagan's top White House adviser, who had replaced presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani; retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the high court; Robert Gates, former CIA director for Bush senior; and former Senator Alan Simpson, the outspoken, cantankerous gadfly from Wyoming. The Democrats were Leon Panetta, the former California congressman and White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton; Vernon Jordan, civil rights attorney and Clinton confidant; William J. Perry, the reserved mathematics Ph.D. and military science expert who had served as Clinton's defense secretary; and former Virginia Governor and Senator Charles Robb, a Marine in Vietnam and son-in-law of the late President Lyndon Johnson.

  The group had met regularly to interview administration officials, Iraqi leaders, members of Congress, scholars and members of the military. On May 18, the last interview of the afternoon was reserved for Lieutenant General David H. Petraeus, head of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, who was working on the military's first counterinsurgency field manual in 20 years.

  I first met Petraeus in 1989, when he was a major and the aide-decamp to General Carl Vuono, the Army chief of staff. I was working on a book on the Pentagon and invited him to dinner on January 31, 1990. The book was The Commanders, which focused on the 1989 invasion of Panama and the 1991 Gulf War during the administration of Bush senior. It was immediately apparent that Petraeus had an unusual, active intellect. He later sent me a copy of his 1987 Princeton Ph.D. dissertation, "The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam." Its thesis, summarized in the introduction to the 317-page manuscript, was that "in no case since Vietnam has the military leadership proffered more aggressive recommendations than those of the most hawkish civilian advisers" to presidents.

  "He's a small, academic-looking guy with glasses," begin the six pages of notes I typed after dinner. I've rarely spoken with anyone as intense. You could almost hear the gears in his brain whirring. Though only 5-foot-9 and 155

  pounds, he was a fitness addict, having won all three prizes at the Army's Ranger School, a nine-week ordeal that grinds body and mind.

  Petraeus at that point had served 17 years. He emphasized his belief that in the military, everything is "personality-driven, personality-dependent." Though he felt personal affection for his boss, Petraeus said that the chief was difficult. Vuono had told him early in his tenure as an aide, "One reason I hired you is I know you have enough self-confidence that if I chew your ass all day, you won't be destroyed by it." The slightest irregularity could set Vuono off. If the chief's black leather gloves were not instantly available, he would chew out Major Petraeus. If the schedule was not in order, Petraeus would get chewed. Before a speech the chief would sweat, get nervous and begin chewing out Petraeus. Once, when Vuono canceled a trip to buy shoes with his son, he suddenly had 30 minutes free. It was fidget city. Vuono couldn't deal with unscheduled time and had little inclination to read, which is what Petraeus would have done. His time with Vuono gave Petraeus an understanding of the impact a senior leader's personality can have on an entire organization.

  Now, at 53, Petraeus remained a slim man with boyish features, famously smart, articulate and motivated. He had served two tours in Iraq, first as commander of the 101st Airborne Division in and around the northern city of Mosul, and later in charge of training the new Iraqi army and security forces as commander of the Multi-National Security Transition CommandóIraq.

  The study group members wanted to talk to him because Petraeus had been lauded as a general who understood the situation on the ground and had a track record of pacifying the territory he controlled.

  The meeting was supposed to take place by videoconference, but the United States Institute of Peace in downtown Washington, where the group had gathered, was having technical problems. Instead, a conference call was piped through speakers in every corner of the room, making Petraeus sound like the voice of God.

  From the first moment, it sounded as though he were following a script.

  "U.S. strategy over the last 18 months has been sound," he said. The ongoing violence had made the mission more difficult. "Nonetheless, no alternative strategy is better."

  He said the United States had "terrific people" assigned to the war, endorsing Casey and Khalilzad and adding, "I would not break up the team of military and civilian leaders currently in Iraq."

  What about the level of violence in Iraq? Hamilton asked. Petraeus acknowledged that it had increased, adding, "The violence and the insurgency are an independent variable," referring to the growing problem.

  Panetta said the study group had been told it would be between 2009 and 2013 before Iraqis could take over security for their country. What did the general think about that?

  That's a worst-case timeline, Petraeus said, though he added, "Iraq is the most challenging security environment I've seen in 31 years in the military." He did not offer his own timeline.

  Petraeus also stressed national reconciliation. "You have to give Sunnis a reason to support the new Iraq," he said.

  "Iraq is a civil-military challenge."

  He said, as he had often in public, that Iraq could not be solved militarily. It had to be solved politically.

  * * *

  The aging soldier showed up alone.

  His hair had long ago turned gray and wrinkles had stolen the youth from his face, but Colin Powell still cut a striking figure as he arrived for his interview with the study group the next day, May 19. Though he had shed his general's uniform more than a dozen years earlier, he still marched perfectly erect, shoulders back, military bearing intact. He wore a dark suit, well-t
ailored shirt and tie and polished black shoes. He moved almost at quick time. But there was nothing careless or hurried about him.

  Even in retirement, Powell, now 69, remained nearly as recognizable as the president of the United States. He might have held the job himself had he not declined to run a decade earlier when the polls had had him at the top. In the minds of many, including his own, he had possessed the tools needed to win the White Houseóa black Republican, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation's number one military man during the 1991 Gulf War, most trusted, most admired, the latest American version of The Great Man of Our Times.

  Instead, he had taken a different path, a path that led him now to this small conference room inside the U.S. Institute of Peace in downtown Washington. It had been sixteen months since he had been pushed out as George W. Bush's secretary of state, a job that had turned out to be a rough ride. Powell had become an outsider in Bush's administration, seen as too much his own man, the Reluctant Warrior out of step with the fulsome muscularity of the post-9/11 Bush team.

  Powell's path, of course, had also led to his role in the Iraq War. He didn't think it was a necessary war, and yet he had gone along in a hundred ways, large and small. He had resisted at times but had succumbed to the momentum and his own sense of deferenceóeven obedienceóto the president. During a mano a mano Oval Office session two months before the Iraq invasion, Bush had asked Powell for his support.

  "Are you with me on this?" Bush had asked, in a personal request to join the commander in chief in battle. "I want you with me."

  Believing the war decision belonged to the presidentónot to generals or secretaries of stateóPowell had pledged his fidelity, perhaps halfheartedly, but unequivocally: "I'm with you, Mr. President."

  Perhaps more than anyone in the administration, Powell had been the "closer" for the president's case for war. A month before the war, he appeared before the United Nations and the world to make the public case, displaying what he said were the "facts" proving that Iraq had threatening stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The 76-minute presentation had proven effective, too effective, with Powell displaying all his powers of persuasion.

  Four years later, no WMD had been found, many saw the war as a catastrophe, and Powell's reputation was irretrievably linked to it, forever damaged. So the 10:30 A.M. meeting on this Friday was both a mission of accommodation and penance. He was going to have to confront the war and its aftermath for the rest of his life, and this was but another stop on the road to sort out his anguish.

  As he entered the small conference room, Powell was greeted warmly by the members of the group. He gazed around the room. There must have been a jailbreak, he joked. The room erupted in laughter.

  There was an obvious camaraderie between Powell and the group members, most of whom had dedicated much of their lives to building up American power and credibility, winning the last phase of the Cold War and shaping a world in which the United States was the only superpower. Now Iraq threatened to undermine all they had built.

  Baker and Hamilton sat together at the head of a table, with Powell directly across from them. The other members lined the sides of the table, and staff sat along the wall.

  Did Powell have something to say up front? Baker asked.

  "I have no opening statement."

  Okay, then why did we go into Iraq with so few troops? Baker asked.

  It was an unusual starting point. The study group was supposed to focus on future remedies, not past troubles. But the question of troop levels seemed to be at the heart of the problem, and the relatively small invasion force of some 150,000 troops had contradicted Powell's philosophy of warfareónamely to send a large, decisive force that would guarantee success. For the 1991 Gulf Waróa far simpler military task of ejecting the Iraqi army from its occupation of KuwaitóPowell, then JCS chairman, had insisted on a force of 500,000.

  Baker's question sparked a monologue that went on for nearly 20 minutes.

  "Colin just exploded at that point," Perry recalled later.

  "He unloaded," Leon Panetta added. "He was angry. He was mad as hell."

  Powell cited pages 393 to 395 from American Soldier, the memoir of General Tommy Franks, who was in charge of Central Command at the time of the Iraq invasion. Quoting from memory, he noted that Franks had faithfully reported a call that Powell had made on September 5, 2002, six months before the invasion. "I've got problems with force size and support of that force, given the long lines of communications" and supplies, Powell had warned Franks.

  "Colin Powell was the free world's leading diplomat. But he no longer wore Army green," Franks had written. "He'd earned his right to an opinion, but had relinquished responsibility for the conduct of military operations when he retired as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993.

  "I picked up the Red Switch and spoke to Don Rumsfeld. 'I appreciate his call,' I said. 'But I wanted to tell him that the military has changed since he left.'"

  Franks reported that "Rumsfeld chuckled," but wanted to make sure that Powell's doubts were aired. "I want him to get them on the table in front of the president and the NSC. Otherwise, we'll look like we're steamrolling," Franks quoted Rumsfeld as saying.

  Again citing Franks's memoir, Powell noted that he had raised his concerns at an NSC meeting held at Camp David with the president two days later. According to Franks's account, "Soft-spoken and polite, ever the diplomat, he questioned the friendly-to-enemy force ratios, and made the point rather forcefully that the Coalition would have

  'extremely long' supply lines."

  Powell did not mention that two pages later, Franks wrote that he had outlined his war plan without objection. "Colin Powell didn't debate the brief I gave, and he didn't ask any more operational questions," Franks wrote, suggesting that Powell did not persist.

  Powell acknowledged to the study group that he couldn't have predicted the insurgency or the chaos of post-invasion Iraq. But he did know that such a mission required plenty of troops. It was the Powell Doctrine: Go in big. Go in to win.

  Seven months before the war, Powell had asked for a private meeting with President Bush to lay out what he felt were the consequences of an invasion of Iraq that the president and his team had failed to examine. Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, summed it up this way: "If you break it, you own it."

  At the study group meeting, Panetta later recalled, Powell said he had warned the president. "I did make clear that once this happens, you're the one who is going to have to pick up the pieces and put it back together again. And it's not going to be easy to do." Or as he put it later: "We not only did not have enough troops to stabilize the country and act like an occupying force, we didn't want to act like an occupying force. But we were the occupying force. We were the government."

  In the classic sense, Powell told the group, there had never been a "front" to this war. The insurgency had begun from behind.

  After his recapitulation on force levels, Powell moved without pause to the lack of postwar planning. He said he was stunned that Rumsfeld, when asked publicly about rampant looting in Iraq, had said, "Stuff happens." At a Pentagon press conference three weeks after the invasion, Rumsfeld had said that freedom was "untidy" and the extensive looting was the result of "pent-up feelings" from decades of Saddam Hussein's oppression. Powell quoted the defense secretary's "stuff happens" with utter disdain, suggesting it was an absurd evaluation and an abdication of responsibility.

  Throughout that spring of 2003, Powell said, he'd kept thinking to himself, "When are we going to get this together?"

  All the Pentagon would say was, "Chalabi is coming, Chalabi is coming," a reference to Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile with a checkered past who had long opposed Saddam Hussein. Chalabi had been the poster boy for a new democracy in Iraq, but Powell was dismissive.

  "It was just Chalabi and 600 thugs," Powell said, noting that Chalabi failed to live up to the promise he'd made to the Pentagon to show up in Iraq
with 10,000 men.

  As secretary of state at the time of the invasion in 2003, Powell said he wasn't told about the decision to dissolve the Iraqi army until it happened. It was a monumental decision that disbanded the entire Iraqi army with the stroke of a pen, and its enactment was contrary to previous briefings that had been given to the president and to Powell. Nor was Powell told in advance about the sweeping de-Baathification order banning members of Saddam's Baath Party from many levels of government. It had effectively pulled the rug out from under the bureaucracy that made the country run, as many Iraqis had needed to be Baathists simply to get a job within Saddam's government.

  Powell expressed astonishment that officials who lacked proper credentials had been sent to Iraq. He specifically mentioned Bernard Kerik, the troubled former New York City police commissioner, whom Bush had named to head the Iraqi national police and intelligence agency. "Bernie Kerik is in charge of police?" Powell asked, with a mixture of mock surprise and disgust. "Where did Bernie Kerik come from?"

  Though he had been out of government for a year and a half, Powell's anger seemed fresh and raw. And now it had risen to the surface for them to see as he channeled years of accumulated resentments into his testimony.

  Had it been anyone else, Baker and Hamilton probably would have interrupted. "We don't want any hand-wringing about the past," they were both fond of saying. But in this case, they let Powell unload without interruption. He was taking them on a journey inside the trauma and dysfunction of the war.

  "This guy was speaking from the gut," Alan Simpson later recalled. "He'd been through the fire, you know, and he had deep feelings about his situation."

  Powell, who had been national security adviser to President Reagan for a year as a three-star general, complained about the NSC process, a not-so-subtle criticism of Rice. Huge issues were never brought to hisóor the president'sóattention, he said. The whole purpose of the NSC was to present issues and options for debate and decision to the national security team and the president. For instance, he said, when Bremer headed the Coalition Provisional Authority overseeing Iraq for more than a year, he operated outside anyone's control. Powell said he learned of Bremer's seven-point plan for Iraq in The Washington Post. In addition, Bremer had used the word