The Gamble

by Thomas E. Ricks

  Petraeus assured Gates that he was. But in return he wanted some clarity from Gates. “Sir, with respect, I just want to talk a bit about my thoughts on what a commander in that position should do,” he said. “That is, that he should have a very clear understanding with you of what the mission is.” For years the mission had been conflicted between creating a stable Iraq and getting out of the country quickly, and trying to do both at the same time wasn’t working. Petraeus thought that the policy of “standing down as they stand up” wasn’t realistic then because “the situation had reached the point where they couldn’t stand up—in fact, some of them were flat on their face, if not helping the enemy.”

  The top priority in the mission should be to secure the Iraqi people, Petraeus said. Turning control over to Iraqi security forces would have to take a backseat. “Transition is a task we all want to perform but it is a task that can only come when the conditions exist to make that possible, and those conditions are of course a level of violence that Iraqi forces can handle.”

  Petraeus also wanted his direct line to Gates to stay open, in order to maintain clarity in policy. “That dialogue should be fairly continuous; it should be based on updates of the situation. This should be a very forthright, brutally honest discussion.” Gates agreed.

  Gates also was looking for someone to take over Central Command. What did Petraeus think of “Fox” Fallon, the crusty chief of the Pacific Command? In his heart, Petraeus would have liked to have seen Gen. Keane picked for the job. He didn’t say that, but instead said he didn’t know Fallon but said he had heard Jack Keane speak highly of him. It was an exchange that he later would remember a bit ruefully.

  On January 5, the White House announced that Petraeus would take command in Iraq. With that selection, the Bush administration was turning the war over to the opposition inside the U.S. military. Casey was kicked upstairs; Abizaid would follow Rumsfeld out the door. In their place, the president and his aides selected pragmatists and skeptics, especially the experts whose advice had been disregarded and even denounced during the run-up to the war. Some had been opponents of the war. Most were critics of current policy, and disillusioned, in the best sense of that word, that they had been stripped of the false assumptions that had hamstrung the U.S. war effort for years. What they all tended to have in common was an eagerness, even an insistence, that the war should be approached in new and different ways, from how troops would be used to how the Iraqi government would be handled to how prisoners would be treated.

  INTO THE “GHOST TOWN”

  The long journeys on aging chartered airliners from the United States to Iraq are frequently a time of reflection for soldiers, especially those going back for a second or third or fourth tour. As Petraeus was flying into Iraq in February 2007, Col. Pete Mansoor, his new executive officer, knelt alongside his seat. “You know, sir, the hardest thing for you, if it comes to it, will be to tell the American people and the president that this isn’t working.”

  Petraeus didn’t say anything. “But he heard it,” Mansoor said. And he nodded.

  They were stunned at just how bad the situation was. The first thing that struck them was the extent of damage inflicted on Baghdad during the municipal civil war of 2006. Then, in briefings, Petraeus learned how widespread Iranian operations were inside Iraq—and how effective, with the sophisticated bombs they provided becoming a major killer of American troops. A few days after landing, he took a tour of two Baghdad neighborhoods, Gaziliyah and Doura. “That was an ‘Oh my God’ moment—the damage done by sectarian violence,” he said. “I mean, they were just ghost towns. When I left in ’05, these were prosperous, fairly high-rent areas. Now there were no shops open. There were weeds and trash and bombed-out hulks.” Amiriyah was arguably worse, he remembered: “We reached a point where you were not allowed to drive in Amiriyah unless you were in a tracked vehicle—a tank or a Bradley.”

  Mansoor, who accompanied him on the grim tour, simply described Doura as “lifeless.” As they drove in convoys of Humvees, the two men talked. “We remarked how these neighborhoods, which seemed largely depopulated, had a tense, frightened feel to them,” Mansoor said. “It was clear to us that the AQI terrorists and Shia militias had intimidated the population into submission. We had a lot of work to do to reverse this downward spiral, and time was not on our side.”

  THE ODD COUPLE

  “There are three enormous tasks that strategic leaders have to get right,” Petraeus said one day in Baghdad. “The first is to get the big ideas right. The second is to communicate the big ideas throughout the organization. The third is ensure proper execution of the big ideas.”

  The accuracy of that view is borne out by a comment by Maj. Roy Myers, a chaplain in the detention operation. All chaplains are especially sensitive to morale issues, but one ministering to soldiers handling detainees must be especially so, because low morale can quickly lead to abuses. “We have to be able to develop a sense of identity and a sense of purpose, even in an environment where the people above us are just baffled,” Myers commented later. “That’s probably why General Petraeus comes off as such a breath of fresh air. . . . [H]e has brought a sense of purpose: ‘What are we going to do in Iraq?’ Otherwise, the tactics overwhelm it: ‘Well, we’re going to go kill bad guys.’ At least now there’s a larger operational /strategic sense of purpose.”

  On his first day in command, Petraeus issued a one-page letter to his troops, letting them know he understood how tough a road they were on. “The truth is, at the strategic level, all you can do is convey a handful of ideas—a handful,” he said later. “Then you do oversight, take the organizational actions that institutionalize the ideas.” That was the point of this letter, which set the scene for following ones. “We serve in Iraq at a critical time,” he began. “A decisive moment approaches.” The enemy, he said, included mass murderers. It wouldn’t be easy taking them on, he said, “but hard is not hopeless.”

  The first question facing Petraeus was how well he would mesh with his new deputy, Odierno, who would oversee day-to-day operations, managing downward, while Petraeus focused upward on the Iraqi and American governments. The two made an odd physical pair: Odierno, at 6 foot 5 inches, and 245 pounds, is 8 inches taller and 90 pounds heavier than Petraeus. Odierno’s most noticeable physical trait is his bulk topped by his hairless, bulletlike head. Petraeus is both small and slightly buck-toothed, sometimes giving him, as he hunches over intently to make a point, a bit of a chipmunklike aspect. The small, nimble Petraeus is as much a diplomat as a soldier, while the hulking Odierno always seemed inclined to use firepower. But Odierno knew that in 2007 he would always do so with Petraeus, the Army’s counterinsurgency expert, looking over his shoulder.

  Odierno is big and emotional, the type of general who will bear-hug a colonel having a hard day. Petraeus generally is cool to the point of being remote. Brig. Gen. “Smokin’ Joe” Anderson—he earned the nickname as a welterweight boxer at West Point—knew both men well, having been a brigade commander for Petraeus in combat in northern Iraq and then becoming Odierno’s chief of staff in 2007. “Odierno is more loyal to his people,” he concluded. “Sometimes if you move on from Petraeus, he will forget you. . . . It’s a little bit more about Dave than it is about Ray.” He also thought Odierno better suited for combat. “Odierno is a better war fighter than Petraeus. Petraeus is more the statesman. Odierno understands the big picture, but his default mode is make sure the enemy knows he can shwack them.”

  Odierno and Petraeus were peers during their first tours, in 2003-4. They had commanded divisions in adjacent areas—Odierno with the 4th Infantry Division headquartered in Tikrit, and Petraeus with the 101st Airborne north of him in Mosul. They had been two of the hottest generals in the Army, quiet allies against the blustery incompetence of their commander, Lt. Gen. Sanchez, and also against the clumsy micromanagement of L. Paul Bremer III, the civilian overseer of the occupation authority. At meetings with top officials, the two tended to sup
port each other. On November 4, 2003, Petraeus complained that he was “astonished” that Bremer and his staff were developing plans without talking to affected U.S. commanders, according to verbatim notes taken by one of Bremer’s subordinates. “It’s a mistake to have planning isolated in Baghdad,” he added.

  Odierno backed him up. “Yes, the campaign plan has to be worked out at all levels,” he said. “Frankly, my sense is you want to cut us out.”

  But they had run their divisions very differently, with Odierno inclined to use the closed fist and Petraeus the open hand. “I see Petraeus up in Mosul,” recalled one general who visited both commanders in the summer of 2003. “He completely understands that he has an urban insurgency on his hands. Therefore, he is spending a considerable amount of time on political and social development. He doesn’t permit indiscriminate major sweeps.” Odierno’s 4th Infantry Division felt unnecessarily aggressive to this general, as if it came in looking for a fight, finally found one, and began overreacting. “He’s conducting one operation after another. They are going through neighborhoods, kicking in doors at two in the morning, without actionable intelligence. That’s how you create new insurgents.”

  The two generals also experienced a bit of friction during Petraeus’s second tour, when he was overseeing the training of Iraqi army and police forces from June 2004 to September 2005. Odierno was part of a small Pentagon delegation sent to Iraq to look at ways to improve Washington’s support of the operation—but perhaps also to assess who was slowing things down in Baghdad. When the group met with Petraeus, he seemed defensive. “There is enormous impatience” back home, Odierno warned him. “You’ve got to get on with this.”

  Petraeus didn’t have a lot of time for pressure from Bush administration officials who had rushed into invading Iraq. “If folks were so impatient,” he snapped, “they might have thought about that before they kicked this whole thing off.”

  Some members of the group found Petraeus guarded to the point of being opaque. One of them was Odierno, who finally asked, “Are you telling me you have everything you need, there’s nothing you want from us in D.C.?”

  Now Petraeus outranked Odierno, and the larger man would have to follow the lead of the smaller, less conventional one. “Everyone knows that Petraeus and Odierno really didn’t get along before,” said Kilcullen, the Australian infantryman and anthropologist who became Petraeus’s adviser on counterinsurgency. But as they worked together in Baghdad in 2007, he noted, there was almost no discernible friction.

  Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who saw them together often, said, “I have noticed when we are doing a campaign review or something like that the quality relationship between the two is such that Ray has no hesitation saying, ‘Let me give you a different take on that,’ and Dave has no problem saying, ‘Good point.’ ”

  This time, subordinates were struck by how well they worked together. “That dynamic has been like hand in glove,” said one senior intelligence official, who had been unsure about how the two would mesh. “Odierno is extremely good at using the force to execute what Petraeus wants to do. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.” Odierno, this officer said, “understood intelligence, and the geometry of the battlespace—how does what I do here affect what I do there, and what I’ll do next. That’s an art. It’s seeing things multidimensionally, in terms of time, space, and human terrain.”

  For all their differences, Petraeus and Odierno brought a key similarity to Iraq in 2007. Col. H. R. McMaster, analyzing American errors in Iraq in the first years of the war, commented that “flexibility as applied to military leadership might be defined as being open to change as an opportunity and having a tolerance for ambiguity; adjusting rapidly to new or evolving situations; applying different methods to meet changing priorities.” That captures well the approach the two generals would take in Iraq as they mounted the counteroffensive of 2007.

  Almost the first thing Odierno did after Petraeus arrived in Baghdad on February 7 was lay out his plans for the surge, which he called “Security Now.” (This briefing is the third document in the appendix.) One new brigade, from the 82nd Airborne, had come in, and a second one, from the 1st Infantry Division, was arriving. Three more would land in the following months. The plan was to use U.S. forces in a radically different way, moving them off the big bases and into small outposts among the population. While the top priority of U.S. forces for years had been handing off to Iraqi forces, the mission was changed to protecting the Iraqi population. “I think he bought it whole,” Odierno recalled.

  The top priority Odierno listed in this first brief to Petraeus was to “secure the Iraqi people, with a focus on Baghdad.” By contrast, making the transition to Iraqi security forces, formerly the top goal of the U.S. mission for years, had been downgraded to the seventh priority on Odierno’s list. Raising the ante a bit, he also warned Petraeus, “Time is not on our side.”

  Early on, Petraeus made what Lt. Gen. James Dubik, another Army three-star general in the country, called “the blood pact” with his top generals. “It was, we’re gonna do this, or we’re gonna go down trying,” Dubik recalled. “But we’re not going to operate so that the next generation of Americans are going to have to go to war to finish this thing. And we’re going to have our integrity when we’re done.” The message: Act like this is your last tour of duty, and don’t worry about what comes next for you.

  Petraeus also sought to make his commanders more flexible and open in dealing with the media. On his fourth day in Iraq, February 10, Petraeus took command and sat down with his generals. “We are in an information war,” he told them. “Sixty percent of this thing is information.” He told them he wanted them to talk more with reporters. “Don’t worry about getting out there too much—I will tell you if you are.” That order reversed the standard approach of Army officers of dealing with the media only as much as was absolutely necessary, in the correct belief that little credit could be gained but that a mistake could damage one’s career. “It was culture shock,” recalled his adviser on communications, Col. Steve Boylan. “They hadn’t been taught to engage.” Boylan, a veteran Apache attack helicopter pilot, argued that the American effort had lost so much credibility that official pronouncements of progress had become meaningless. “We couldn’t tell the American people anything anymore. We had to show them. They had heard enough.”

  THE PETRAEUS BRAIN TRUST

  Two anomalies characterized the team Petraeus brought together in Baghdad. First, it was one of the most selective clubs in the world, dominated by military officers who possessed doctorates from top-flight universities as well as combat experience in Iraq. “I cannot think of another case of so many highly educated officers advising a general,” said Carter Malkasian, who has advised Marine Corps commanders in Iraq on counterinsurgency and himself holds an Oxford doctorate in the history of war. Second, to a surprising degree, it was a minority organization, in the sense that the surge had been supported by only a small group inside the military and would be implemented by a group of dissidents, skeptics, and outsiders, some of them foreigners. “Their role is crucial if we are to reverse the effects of four years of conventional mind-set fighting an unconventional war,” said a Special Forces colonel who knew some of the officers.

  Foremost among the doubters was Petraeus, who during the 2003 invasion of Iraq had skeptically said several times to a reporter, “Tell me how this ends.” It was clear back then that he hadn’t joined Gen. Tommy Franks and other top commanders in believing that toppling a statue or two in Baghdad was the answer.

  After years of inclining toward anodyne pronouncements about steady progress, which always begged the question of whether there was enough progress, or whether the speaker actually knew what was happening, the new team could be refreshingly blunt. “We have done some stupid shit,” Maj. Gen. Dave Fastabend, who moved out to become Petraeus’s chief of strategy, said at the beginning of one interview about the conduct of the war, as he put his feet on the table behind his d
esk and stared eastward out the window, toward the part of Baghdad where rockets and mortars are launched into the Green Zone.

  There also surfaced occasionally a tone of resentment, of being sent out to clean up a mess created by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Franks, and others, and who resented the criticisms being leveled by the new crew. “People were like, ‘Fuck you, you think you’re smarter than us,’ ” recalled David Kilcullen, whom Petraeus recruited to be a kind of counterinsurgency coach for his commanders. “A lot of them were waiting for us to fail.”

  Interestingly, that antipathy didn’t extend to the ringleader of the mess, President Bush, even in private conversations. Lt. Col. Charlie Miller, who prepared Petraeus for his weekly video-teleconference with Bush, and sometimes sat in on them, said the president actually surprised him in the first meeting. “He was very different from the president you see on TV, that sideways smile of his. He was very informed, questioning, engaged.” But Miller was peeved by the Pentagon officials who launched the war and then left the government: “What bothers me is Martha Stewart went to jail for the little stuff, but people who fundamentally misunderstood the situation are teaching at Georgetown,” he said over dinner one day at Camp Victory, referring to Douglas Feith, who was under secretary of defense for policy during the invasion and occupation of Iraq and went on to become a professor at Georgetown University and publish a soporific memoir.

  Lt. Col. Suzanne Nielsen, a Harvard Ph.D. who was a strategist for Petraeus, said that five years after the event, “I still find it kind of unforgivable” how the war was commenced in 2003.

  At a planning office at Central Command, the headquarters to which Petraeus officially reported, someone pinned up a photo of Gen. Anthony Zinni, the Marine who preceded Tommy Franks at the command. He had gone into opposition against the Bush administration during the run-up to the invasion and had been something of an outcast since then. Posting his photo spoke volumes. This wasn’t Franks’s headquarters anymore, where Zinni’s “Desert Crossing” plan for invading Iraq if it collapsed, drawn up in 1999 after some new intelligence on the shakiness of Saddam’s regime, had been neglected and even disparaged as outmoded.