Chapter 27

The NSC gathered at 7 A.M. on Saturday, December 9, with Casey and Khalilzad on secure video.

The general and the ambassador were scheduled to meet with Maliki the next day. They said they anticipated he would ask for additional Iraqi forces and more help from U.S. Special Forces. In addition, they said Maliki believed he was winning over Iraqi moderates.

"Isn't it part of the deal for Maliki to go after Sadr?" the president asked. "He needs to go after him and say he's going after him."

No, Casey and Khalilzad said. Maliki would say he was going after militias and those who break the law. He wouldn't single out Sadr, who still had ministers in the government and had been in a dialogue with Maliki at one point. Sadr and his Mahdi Army were too powerful. But Maliki would go after JAM under the pretext of going after the militias. This, in turn, would allow the United States to go after JAM and the militias.

"How does this all differ from where we are now?" Bush asked.

"The difference," Casey said, "is we're going to do it. We're going to have an operational plan. We're going to have a timeline for doing it." Maliki would "declare on the 18th of December that by a specific date, if the militia don't stop carrying weapons, stop the violence against civilians and accept the DDR"ódisarmament, demobilization and reintegrationó"then there will be a joint operation in January that we are planning now."

After the previous day's NSC meeting, Bush and Hadley had talked about some downsides of helping with sectarian violence. So the president asked, "What if JAM won't fight? What if they adopt the Hezbollah model of protesting the government? We don't want our troops in riot control. That's for the Iraqis. And if they go to ground"óinto hidingó"it has to be a most wanted list of people to track down. How do you fight a ragtag group that goes to ground?"

"We will restore Iraqi control of Sadr City," Casey said. "It'll be clear when people are standing outside the law. If you see weapons, you can pick people up. Sadr City is now a safe haven."

Hadley said that would be a big test for Maliki. If he went into the Mahdi Army's stronghold of Sadr City and targeted fellow Shia, it would demonstrate some nonsectarian bona fides.

"Well, if we go into Sadr City," Bush asked, "who goes in? How? Do we have enough forces to go in? Whose forces? Who stays behind after we go in? We're not going to sit there. Who stays behind? Us? Iraqis? What's the concept here?"

"We would work on him to set the political conditions," Casey told him. "Then we would go through the areas with significant JAM presence first. We'd reposition Iraqi and coalition forces from within Iraq. We would preposition two brigades in Kuwait if the action spreads outside Baghdad. We don't need to see a repetition of April and August of '04." That was when the United States had gone after the JAM, touching off violence throughout Iraq.

"Who holds after we go in?" Bush asked, zeroing back on Sadr City. "Iraqi forces? Is it the police? Is it the army?"

He was told a mix of Iraqi army, Iraqi national police and some local Iraqi police.

"It has to be successful," Bush said. "To the extent that we rely on police, that's a problem. Should we add more Iraqi army? Should we fold the national police into the army?"

"We need to be realistic," the president went on. "We need to have a realistic time frame and a criteria to judge Maliki's intentions. Once we go down this road, if there's not 100 percent effort toward achieving the goal, we're going to need to be prepared to do something dramatically different."

A voice from outside the usual group spoke up. "Look, Mr. President, I agree," said Treasury Secretary Paulson. He was there at Hadley's request. "How much time do we have, and how many bites at the apple do we have? Do we need to develop more radical options and have them ready?" He mentioned Rice's option, in which the military would intervene only if violence reached genocidal levels. He suggested that the president not wait too long. "Make a judgment about Maliki. But my experience is people don't change much."

Hadley knew that the president's view was somewhat different, particularly concerning Maliki. He believed he had helped Maliki change and grow in his job.

And now Bush sprang to the Iraqi prime minister's defense. "Maliki's right when he says he doesn't have enough tools to do the job," he said. "We need to take that excuse away from him. We need to give him the right tools. But I will be making the decisions, and the goal is radical action to achieve victory."

For Hadley, that was the headline. But Rice thought otherwise. "It's not just Maliki that's involved here," she cautioned. "Remember, it's not just one man. But we should be challenging the entire moderate establishment:

'Unless you are willing to go after the extremes, we will leave you to fight each other, and we'll go after al Qaeda and secure the borders and you guys can all fight it out. So if you're willing to do it and step up, we'll help. But if you don't, we'll protect our interests.'" Those interests, she said, included preventing Iraq from entirely falling apart and continuing the American campaign against al Qaeda.

Someone mentioned the sensitive intelligence reports, which showed the Iraq security forces were not up to the task of taking on the sectarian violence. Were they expecting the Iraqis to take on too much?

The president said that Maliki, with some legitimacy, had often complained to him about the Iraqi army's equipment.

Quoting the prime minister, the president said, "You run around in APCs [armored personnel carriers] and tanks. We run around in pickup trucks." Maliki also had complained that the bad guys had rocket-propelled grenade launchers, while his army had only AK-47s.

"How can an army instill fear when it looks like the militias they're fighting?" Bush asked. "So we have to tell Maliki that we will give his army a lot of equipment." For more than three years of war, the basic strategy had been to turn over security responsibilities to the Iraqis. But the U.S. military was still not providing the best equipment, and enough of it, for a simple reasonóa basic lack of trust.

The military officers said they would look into their ability to provide more equipment. The Iraqis, it was noted, did have Humvees and armored vehicles in addition to their pickup trucks.

"Iraq should pour all its resources into Baghdad," the president said. He had been told that 33 Iraqi battalions in nine quiet provinces could be moved. "Why not move them to Baghdad?" he asked.

"We're doing that," Casey told him.

"Will Maliki have the best available Iraqi forces in Sadr City?" Bush asked.

"They have divisions, one each in the south and west, that are more capable than the ones in Sadr City now," Casey acknowledged. "But they're otherwise engaged in some pretty important stuff."

"How many Iraqi brigades will be involved?" the president asked.

Some 50,000 to 60,000 Iraqi security forces were involved in Baghdad, Casey said. That was three times the number of U.S. troops in the capital.

Bush was surprised. "What portion of the army are the most capable Iraqi forces?" he asked. "Do we need more American troops if Maliki agrees to do this?"

That, of course, was the primary question, but no one offered a direct answer. Casey instead said they were considering martial law.

The president, meanwhile, was focused on the number of troops. "We need to understand if we can have more troops in both Anbar and Baghdad," the president said. "It's the other shoe."

Hadley realized that Bush wanted more troops in both places and was trying to show where he was going.

But the discussion returned to Sadr City, and it was noted that many Shia viewed the JAM as protectors.

The NSC seemed to agree that there was going to be a battle for Baghdad one way or another. Once begun, it would have to go to the finish. Bush said he agreed with the suggestion that they would need additional air and naval power in the region to deter Iran, given Iran's support for and connections to the JAM and other Shia extremists.

Referring to Gates and Pace, he added, "Bob and Pete need to think seriously about this. But what does it mean? If something happened, if Iran calls our bluff, how will we respond? Once Bob is sworn in, Pete, Bob and John"óAbizaidó"need to come in and brief me on this."

"We need a strong message to Iran to stop fooling around," said Cheney.

The conversation returned to Maliki. "We need a deft touch to get Maliki to the position where he succeeds," the president said. "It doesn't mean cramming it down Maliki's throat. We want him to succeed, and we need to help him to get there."

Rice repeated her frequent warning to the Iraqis, that they needed to hang together or they would hang separately from lampposts.

"We need something to deter Iran and Syria," said Cheney, "and that's important not just for Iraq but for the region and for Lebanon, too."

* * *

Early the next Monday, Bush met with the NSC for a report on recent conversations with Maliki. The prime minister had agreed to a joint, immediate operation in Baghdad against all purveyors of violence, Casey and Khalilzad reported, even though U.S. planning called for the operation to begin the next month, in January.

"Maliki needs to announce to his people and to our people that he's going against all who act outside the law, that he's asked the coalition for help," the president said. "And Maliki then needs to announce the plan that you're going to help him develop in a speech to the nation." Maliki's speech should be a day or two before Bush's speech.

"Iraqi forces would need to be in the lead. What does that mean? Do the Iraqis have the forces?" Bush asked.

"We want the Iraqis to take ownership," Casey told him. "They have the command and control. They have enough forces. But the issue is reliability. We're working through it. And the result may mean that they have to lean more on coalition forces."

"How will we ensure Maliki will see it through?" the president asked.

It was suggested they start with the plan that Maliki had submitted in Amman.

"If the politics get hot, will the Iraqi leadership stick to it?" asked the president.

Casey and Khalilzad reported that there were conflicting pressures. The Iraqi government wanted to do it. But they were going to want to minimize the political cost. So Maliki would say it needed to be his plan, his troops, as much as possible against all elements, not just JAM. And when they briefed the plan, they would have to run through the contingencies with Maliki.

"We can't have him back out once he sees the plan," Bush said, "especially if it isn't until a couple days before my speech. If he needs more help, will he accept more coalition forces?"

Several said they believed Maliki would accept more coalition forces, but no one had yet discussed the specific number with him.

"Maliki needs to be bold and aggressive," the president said. "He needs to tell his country that they need to end the violence and that he needs our help to do it."

Discussion again turned to Maliki and the requirement that he hold his government together. A military effort alone would not be enough. Then someoneóit is unclear who from the notes of the meetingóadded optimistically, "We'll see a gradual diminution of violence over time with some spikesÖmay be a month or two before people see things as different."

"We need to buy time," the president said, "so the moderate coalition can emerge and the police can function. We need to bridge and buy time for the government so that violence does not get out of hand and prevent the government from taking steps it needs to take. We need to try to tamp down the extremist cleansing so the government can function. Does that mean we need more U.S. forces?"

The discussion turned to what resources Maliki possessed. The reports indicated that 40 percent of the local police were suspect as to their loyalty, an astoundingly high number. It was clear that Maliki didn't have enough force.

"Maliki should take credit, getting the U.S. to put in the forces that are needed for success," Bush said.

They discussed the importance of getting religious leaders to call for calm.

"What about martial law as a way to achieve a psychological impact?" Bush asked.

"We need a security plan, an economic plan and a political plan," Rice said.

"Once we get Maliki on board, and once we start this plan, we can't stop it," the president said. "Keep me posted on how the conversations with Maliki are going. Raise the martial law with him."

Discussion turned to which moderates in Iraq might support Maliki and the importance of making Baghdad the main priority.

But what about Anbar province? The local U.S. commander there was submitting plans for new troops. Would more troops help there?

J. D. Crouch, Hadley's deputy, had visited Anbar during a trip to Iraq earlier in the fall and gotten a strong sense from the soldiers and officers on the ground that more troops would help solidify the gains that had been made there.

"They basically said, 'Look, Anbar is a big place, but it's really not a big place,'" he recalled. "'Because if you control the river and you control the road, that's all of Anbar. The rest is dust.'" They told him there wasn't enough force to hold the river and the road, and in sections the insurgents could move freely. He said they had told him that a little more U.S. force, coupled with the local uprising against al Qaeda, might make a big difference. Crouch saw it as an opportunity.

"Don't be timid about asking for more troops," the president finally said, and he adjourned the meeting.

* * *

General Jack Keane had been working for several days with Frederick W. Kagan, a former professor of military history at West Point and expert on ground warfare who was a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. Kagan, 36, heavyset and mild-mannered, did not fit the model of a hawkish, detail-oriented military planner. For years he had been publishing articles calling for more force in Iraq, and for months he had been working full-time with an Iraq planning group he had assembled at the think tank. Retired senior and midlevel military officers and several currently on active duty had joined his group. Kagan hoped his freelance effort would raise the level of discourse and get some attention in conservative circles.

Kagan was appalled by the conclusions of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. "The default function of politicians is to come to consensus. The problem is that the consensus strategies in war almost never work," said Kagan, a 19th-century military warfare expert. "A reason why Napoleon did so well against people for so long is because they were having councils of war, and he was just doing stuff, and he wasn't compromising."

Kagan was a good friend of Colonel H. R. McMaster, who had thanked him in print for his help with Dereliction of Duty. The two had taught together at West Point, and Kagan was impressed with the work McMaster had done to stabilize Tall Afar, calling it a model of counterinsurgency. Kagan and his team figured out which Army units could be sent as part of a surge. It came to at least five brigades. They were preparing charts, tables and maps detailing how counterinsurgency could work in Baghdad. One map divided Baghdad into 75 different districts and showed the sectarian or mixed affiliation of each. They planned to issue a 45-page report the next month, after a crash weekend work session starting December 9.

Keane went to the AEI offices that weekend for detailed briefings on the plan. He'd spent years as a member of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board, getting TOP SECRET briefings and traveling to Iraq. But he was stunned by the depth of the material the AEI group had compiled.

"Where the hell did you get all of that?" he asked Kagan and his experts, figuring the active duty officers had brought much of it from the Pentagon. "Don't bullshit me, guys. Where'd you get that stuff?"

They insisted it all had come from the Internet and other open sources. They showed him some examples, much of which matched up with the classified material he'd seen. In any case, it was impressive work. Keane left convinced that it carefully and systematically answered the question of how additional U.S. troops could be used to protect the Iraqi population.