Chapter 5

In late spring, Bush met with his entire cabinet and made a strong pitch for everyone to participate in the war effort.

Abizaid, Casey and Khalilzad all briefed, and the president gave an all-hands-on-deck speech. Several weeks later, at an NSC meeting on May 26, 2006, Rice, who was in charge of assembling personnel willing to go to Iraq from various departments and agencies, announced the final numbers: 48 people had signed on.

"Ma'am, that is a paltry number," blurted Casey, who was in the meeting by secure video from Iraq. To him, it proved that the civilians weren't contributing enough to the waróthe most important undertaking of the Bush administration and a venture with so many U.S. interests at stake. He hoped the president would demand more action.

General, Rice replied tersely, you're out of line.

"On that happy note," the president said, "we will adjourn."

Rumsfeld immediately dashed off a SECRET snowflake to Casey: "My apologies to you for the comments that were made in the NSC meeting this morning. It is a pattern. There is not much anyone seems to be able to do about itÖ.

Thanks for all you're doing out there and for your patience today as well."

Casey didn't feel at all patient. Neither Rice nor Hadley had come up with a national strategy for the Iraq War or found a way to make sure it was properly resourced. David Satterfield, the deputy chief of mission in the embassy, had told Rice on a visit to Iraq once, "Here's the most important mission for the country, and they have three linguists that can speak Arabic at the highest level from the State Department."

* * *

"I just took a look at the attached page 49 from the quarterly report to Congress," wrote Rumsfeld, focused on details as ever, in a May 30 snowflake to Casey about troop levels. "I noticed the gray area is coalition, and we are increasing the number of combat operations every month. I would have thought that the ISF [Iraqi security forces]

would increase, the combined would increase, but the coalition would go down. It seems the opposite is happening.

Let's talk about it and figure out why."

Now in the fourth year of the war, the defense secretary was still asking about the elusive numbers of exactly how many Iraqi soldiers were trained and ready for duty. And he was still pushing for a U.S. military less involved in Iraq, not more.

* * *

Jim Jeffrey, Rice's coordinator for Iraq policy, was a 6-foot-3 Bostonian and a career diplomat who had served as U.S. ambassador to Albania and later as deputy chief of mission in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in 2004ñ05. He believed the United States could not abandon Iraq, as it had Vietnam in 1975. And like Zelikow, Jeffrey believed it was possible to devise a successful counterinsurgency strategy along the lines of what Colonel H. R. McMaster had done in Tall Afar.

On June 5, Zelikow and Jeffrey presented Rice with a SECRET 11-page memo titled "Possible political-military strategy for summer 2006." It reflected the sum of their frustrations.

They noted that Maliki and his new government continue "to roll out ill-prepared, ad hoc initiatives like last week's declaration of an emergency in Basra or this week's plan to announce a large-scale release of detainees" held by the U.S.

In bold letters, they wrote: "Likelihood of success for the proposed strategy is low."

This was still an American effort, and U.S. control was essential. "The argument that the U.S. should not strongly assert its preferences to the Iraqi government is wrong," they wrote, and saying "let-them-do-it-themselves" would be a cop-out.

"Maliki has never run a large organization," they noted. He had never even run a small one. A 56-year-old Shia, Maliki had been in exile for 23 years, apparently bouncing between Iran and Syria. His chief credential was that he had been a spokesman for the political party al Dawa (The Call), a relatively minor Shia party. The Iraqi parliament had selected him as the first permanent prime minister. He was a precarious compromise between the two real Shia forces in Iraq. The first was Moqtada al-Sadr, the young militant cleric and leader in Sadr City, the northeastern quadrant of Baghdad with more than 2 million people. The other was the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, SCIRI, one of Iraq's most powerful political parties and the largest party in the Iraqi Council of Representatives, headed by Iraqi theologian and politician Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

The SECRET memo offered three options: A) strong, B) medium and C) weak. Not surprisingly, Zelikow and Jeffrey encouraged the middle road.

Option A, which they rejected, was called "Full Counterinsurgency."

"This would apply a Tall Afarñlike approach to all the major trouble spots, starting with Baghdad. It is very soldier-intensiveÖ. It might require a significant additional infusion of American combat poweróperhaps several additional brigadesóto make it work."

The option was not presented as a surefire winning strategy, designed or guaranteed to achieve victory or to address the more important threshold question of whether victory was attainable. And it failed, like many other proposals, to address the problem of who would hold an area, assimilate the population, restore order, and demonstrate the benefits of signing up with the new Iraqi government and joining in the democratic process.

Option B was "Selective Counterinsurgency." It would include fighting in "a few selected areas" and "also could require some infusion of additional American forces in the short term, with the gamble that this strategy could produce a much better climate for withdrawal of American forces later this year or next." Calling an option they intended to recommend a "gamble" was highly unusual for the authors of an option paper.

Option C was described as a "keep-the-lid-on," "reactive" approach that would result in "increased chance of continued decay and security conditions." With little irony, they noted in recommending Option B that "our current policies seem most consistent with Option C."

They also said that Option B could result in a "significant drawdown of American forces, perhaps to below 100,000"

within six months. In their analysis, "the latest Baghdad Security Plan does not appear sufficient to clear and hold the city, or even the most insecure neighborhoods in it."

Rice sent a copy of the memo to Hadley at the White House.

Given the obvious gravity of the situation, the remedies were modest, and the boundaries of Zelikow and Jeffrey's proposals were limited by what their superiors allowed on the table.

The CIA kept warning that sectarian violence was growing and that the new government did not haveóand was not developingóroots. But the inner circle of the administration seemed to have shielded itself from bold new ideas, and those on the outside weren't breaking through.

* * *

Casey had the Special Operations units working day and night trying to locate Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. In early June, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, the Joint Special Operations commander, called on a secure line and said he thought they had pinpointed Zarqawi in a small house that likely contained women and children.

"How sure are you that he's there?"

"I'm sure," McChrystal said, his voice cracking.

Not long afterward, McChrystal called to report that the planes had hit the target and that the body had been brought to his headquarters.

"We're going to wait on the fingerprints, but this is the guy," the Special Operations commander said. "All my guys who've been working this for two years are convinced this is the guy."

"Mr. Secretary, listen," Casey said in a secure call to Rumsfeld, "I want to tell you something that I'm not 100

percent sure of, but I'm sure enough that you need to know this is happening."

Rumsfeld held his breath, expecting the worst.

"I think we got Zarqawi tonight."

"Oh, Jesus Christ!" Rumsfeld bellowed, unused to good news. "All I could say to myself was 'What the hell else could have gone wrong there?'"

Later, Rumsfeld dictated a personal snowflake to Casey: "Congratulations on finding, fixing and finishing Zarqawi.

What a superb job you have done in Iraqóyou make us all proud."

* * *

"I don't think you'll find that there is a lot of disagreement about the strategy," Rice said during a meeting on June 7, 2006. This was to be her public positionóoptimistic and unyielding. "I think you'll find that most people think we're on the only reasonable course." She and her staff were to keep up the appearance that widespread agreement existed on the current strategy.

But it was untrue. Most everyone inside and outside the administration was realizing that the current course seemed less and less reasonable. Rice had key staff members such as Zelikow examining the Iraq strategy and writing classified memos about their findings, and she knew only too well that the war effort was in serious trouble.

"It was pretty clear what we were doing wasn't working," she would say two years later, looking back on that time.

"We were not going to succeed. We might not even be able to fight to a standstill if we just stayed on the course we were on."

* * *

"I've just returned from Baghdad," Bush said at a morning news conference in the Rose Garden on June 14, the day after his surprise visit to Maliki in Iraq, "and I was inspired."

He expressed no reservations about the strategy and gave no hint of the trouble they were in. Nor did he express doubt about Casey.

"I've got people who say, 'You need to increase the number of forcesónow,'" Bush said. "I've gotten people that said,

'Well, the role of the United States ought to be more indirect than it has been,' in other words, in a supporting role.

To those folks, I say, 'Look, I'm going to rely on General Casey.'"

He added, "I know there is a lot of discussion about troop levels. Those troop levels will be decided upon by General Casey. He will make the recommendations, in consultation with an Iraqi government. But whatever decision General Casey makes, the message is going to be, 'We'll stand with you.'"

* * *

That same afternoon, the president met privately with the 10 members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

"It's going to work," he said, brimming with confidence. He said he never paid attention to public opinion polls and instead listened to General Casey.

He also seemed impressed with Maliki. "We know the problems," the president said. "He's going to solve them."

Bob Gates pressed. "We're putting a lot of chips on Maliki. Are we sure he's the right guy?"

Bush indicated that he had no doubts.

Alan Simpson insisted that the president find some way to talk with the governments of Iran and Syria. Not talking doesn't work, he said. Doesn't work in marriages, doesn't work between governments.

Throughout the meeting, the president offered little more than a reprise of his public statements.

Was this "the real deal"? Baker asked. Was the president serious about listening to the Iraq Study Group's recommendations, whatever they might be?

Bush insisted that he was and that he would order his administration to cooperate fully.

* * *

In Baghdad, Casey appreciated the president's repeated public votes of confidence. But he kept asking himself: What do civilian leaders bring to such a war? After all, neither the full capacity of the U.S. government nor the American people were ever mobilized. No one ever articulated a grand strategy about what the heck the United States was doing. Nearly everything fell to the military.

Casey was scheduled to return to Washington later in the month to see the president, Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs.

So he sat down at breakfast with his senior commanders in Iraq. "Okay," he said, "does everybody have the troops they need?"

They all said yes.

On June 21, Casey was back in the United States, meeting with the Joint Chiefs in their secure conference room inside the Pentagon, known as the tank.

"Iraq Update and Way Ahead," read his SECRET briefing. Casey told them that all of Iraq would be ready for transition to Iraqi control within 18 months, with the exception of Anbar province. A colored map showed only Anbar as red, meaning not ready for transition. Everything else was green. Casey envisioned reducing the U.S. force from the current 15 combat brigades to as few as 10 within six months. Then, six months after that, it would be down to seven or eight brigades, and by December 2007 only five to six combat brigades would remain.

Currently, he said there were 69 U.S. bases in Iraq, but in a year and a half he intended to cut to 11 basesóan 84

percent reduction.

After the killing of Zarqawi, Casey felt optimistic. The war on the ground was nothing like Vietnam. They were not fighting organized units at all. As he put it, "Even the militias are just a bunch of ragbags in pickup trucks."

On Friday, June 23, Casey was at the White House residence, briefing the president.

"I think we can off-ramp a couple more brigades," he told the commander in chief, meaning about 5,000 troops would leave in September and not be replaced. He summarized his plan of continuing to draw down brigades for the next 18 months, leaving the United States with only five to six brigades by the end of 2007.

The president endorsed the concept but not necessarily the timetable. "We may not need to go that fast," he said.

* * *

On the third floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, Meghan L. O'Sullivan, the deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan, was enduring a bout of soul-searching. A trim redhead with a Ph.D. in political science from Oxford, O'Sullivan was only 36. Her lack of military experience made her an unlikely deputy for coordinating two major wars. But she had attached herself to powerful patrons, first in the months before the invasion to former Army Lieutenant General Jay Garner, who had been chosen to oversee postwar reconstruction; then for more than a year on the staff of Garner's replacement, Jerry Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Afterward, O'Sullivan spent two years on the NSC staff working directly for Rice and then Hadley. She regularly reminded people that she worked 18-hour days, seven days a week, and hadn't had a date in years. O'Sullivan was bright, ambitious and persistent, and she thrived in the all-work, little-play environment. Five days a week, she wrote a highly classified Iraq Note, averaging three pages, which went directly to the president. The news covered casualties, bombings, military operations, and intelligence, providing Bush with a quick overview and summary of the day's events. Copies went to Cheney, new White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and Hadley. Day after day, the notes contained a lot of bad news. The president made clear to O'Sullivan and Hadley that he was not fully confident in the information and analysis he was receiving through the normal military, diplomatic and intelligence channels.

"Just so you know," the president later told me, "the environment is not one where I'm sitting here and occasionally a senior person pops in, takes 30 seconds of my time and pops out. There is a lot of action in here. Meghan O'Sullivan, she'd come in, and I'd say, 'Before you leave, I need to ask you something. What are you thinking, Meghan? How do you think? Give me your opinion.'

"I like to get information from a variety of sources."

As the violence had escalated throughout the spring, O'Sullivan went to talk privately with her boss, Steve Hadley, knowing that the national security adviser wanted important, sensitive communications delivered verbally rather than in memos that could leak.

"I'm really worried about where this is going," she said, referring to the latest spate of violence. "I don't feel good about itÖI'm talking to my friends in Baghdad, and it's a different tone. They're scared." At the NSC meetings she attended, the president often showed his frustration, and it was unclear to her whether it was directed at Casey or at the overall lack of progress in Iraq. Now that Casey was recommending a drawdown of two brigades, she saw more trouble ahead.

"We have a huge problem on our hands," she told Hadley. "This is going to be a pretty significant move in the wrong direction. And it will be close to irreversible if it just accelerates the negative trends we have." Already, the negative trends were dominating Iraq. She said of the current situation, "This is broken."

She saw that Hadley shared her alarm. Unlike some in the administration, O'Sullivan still had faith in the CIA and other intelligence agencies' information and judgments. They briefed her on Iraq three or four days a week. And at least one of those days, she met with a half a dozen or more members of the CIA Iraq team to do what she called a

"deep dive" into one aspect of Iraq for an hour and a half. She heard nothing that suggested it was all going to work out. O'Sullivan sensed an almost universal acknowledgment within the administration, even from the president, that things weren't going well and that the policy and approach were off track. And yet, nothing had changed.

What to do? And when? The upcoming congressional elections were five months off, and the Republicans' narrow control of both the House and the Senate were at stake. The mishandling of the Iraq War would be at the center of Democratic political attacks on Bush and the Republicans.

Hadley said he would try again to launch a strategy review.