The study group had just finished talking with senior members of the Clinton foreign policy teamóNational Security Adviser Sandy Berger, U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright. As they were leaving, Clinton invited them to stick around for his interviewóthe old White House and State Department team reunited.
"There are no good options," Clinton said in his opening statement. "If you're going to change course, there are three things you can do. You can go up 100,000 troops. You can hang around and get bled to death. Or you can redeploy
[home]. What else are you going to do? Those are your choices.
"We don't control the situation now. We will have even less control once we draw downÖ. They are not tired of killing each other."
Clinton urged the study group to be frank about the downsides of every option. Be clear that there's no easy solution, he advised. "This cannot be solved in the near term within Iraq. This cannot be solved within the four corners of Iraq," he said. "We have to be better than lucky."
Clinton then went on a lengthy tangent about Afghanistan. "If you don't act in Iraq, the chances of losing Afghanistan are greater and more calamitous for the United States than the loss of Iraq," he said. "The Taliban is making inroads. Our ally, Pakistan, is part of the problem. More troops for Afghanistan is absolutely essential. We cannot address Afghanistan unless we leave Iraq."
He reminded them that the United Nations and the world supported America in Afghanistan. That's not the case in Iraq, he said.
It was a typical Clinton performance, drifting from one topic to the next. At one point, the former president took out an unlit cigar and twirled it in his fingers as he began to talk about diplomacy.
Clinton suggested initiating talks with Iran without any preconditions. "We have to have some trusted adviser and start to talk to Iran," he said. "If you might fight somebody someday, you sure ought to talk to them."
He turned to the Arab-Israeli peace process. "Bush hasn't asked [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert to do anything," Clinton said. That was a mistake. "In the first four years of this administration, three times as many Israelis and Palestinians have died as during my administration.
"Whenever we fool with it, less people die and it reduces the animosity toward AmericaÖ. We may fail on one or all these fronts and still be better off than we are now."
Clinton made a strong pitch for engaging the Syrians in the peace process: "Go to the Syrians and ask them, 'Do you really think this relationship with Iraq works for you?'" The war in Iraq was weakening America in the eyes of the world. "Iranian and North Korean foreign policy is to stick it up America's ass because we're tied down in Iraq," he said.
Robb asked him how to convince President Bush to buy into a new approach.
"President Bush deeply believes that Iraq was the right thing to do, and he cannot abandon that belief," Clinton replied. What you must say to President Bush is that "history may still vindicate the decision to invade IraqÖ. They may fight it out for two, three, four or seven years before they grow weary and reach a settlement.
"But history may still vindicate the decision to go to war. So let them fight it out. You cannot stop them from killing each other."
Clinton said he had just returned from Vietnam. Look at that country today. Look at the economy. It's better off than it was before the war. Thirty years from now, some American president might go to Iraq and find a place that's far better off than it is today. Bush has to think in that broad context. "The president believes what he did is right, and that history will vindicate his decision on Saddam."
Clinton displayed a heartfelt empathy for Bush, defending the sincerity of his successor. Right or wrong, Clinton said, Bush doesn't make his decisions based on politics. He believes in this. As president, "ninety percent, maybe 98
percent, of your decision making is not politics, no matter how stupid that may seem to you," he said.
Clinton was in favor of a troop withdrawal from Iraq, but he was against setting deadlines. "You lose leverage with a deadline," he said. He'd prefer pulling people out without advance warning. His preference would be to take some troops out right away to send them to Afghanistan. "You've got to write your report in such a way that what you advocate will make the country stronger and that we can still come out of this right.
"The American people are against" this war. "They think it was a mistake. But they are 50ñ50 about what to do.
Americans hate to lose, but they also hate to pour good money after bad. We're on a psychological razor's edge.
When you write the report, you have to show how America can come out stronger at the end." He paused.
"Americans have to feel like they're on the right side of history."
"Mr. President," Baker said, "you came closer than anyone to a deal with Syria."
He also agreed with Clinton on the need for continued diplomacy on the Palestinian issue.
"It doesn't help Israel when we just sit and wait for the next arms order," the former president said. Leon Panetta thought it sounded almost as if Baker had worked under Clinton.
Hamilton asked Clinton about the consequences of failure in Iraq, as well as the consequences of our current policy.
"It's important to announce that we're pursuing a different course," Clinton said, something Bush had been reluctant to do as the war deteriorated. He said America had alienated much of the world. "We pay a price when everyone hates us."
Panetta asked: How would you get Maliki to move on national reconciliation?
"I would just spend lots and lots of time with him and with them [Iraqi leaders]ÖI would spend a hell of a lot more time with him. Massive amounts of time." That, of course, was Clinton's style, not Bush's.
Clinton returned to the necessity that Bush implement the study group's findings. "If the president announces a change in course, he will get more timeóif you can convince him to change. Nixon was reelected easily. More people were killed [in Vietnam] after Nixon was elected."
He added, "The president may feel this is good for him."
"He wants us to give him a chance to change policy," Baker said.
"The president and the country want you to give the country a way forward," Clinton said. "The costs are very adverse for staying where we are. It's costing us a lot of lives and money."
Clinton's hour had stretched to an hour and a half, and no one seemed eager for it to end, especially Clinton. Even the Republicans were impressed.
Vernon Jordan posed a last question. Would you talk to Bush after the report comes out?
"I'll do it if it helps," Clinton said. "We may differ. But we have a responsibility when we differ to be respectful and to be preciseÖ. There's not a Democrat alive that doesn't want things to go better in Iraq."
Chapter 23
At 5 P.M. on Wednesday, November 15, J. D. Crouch assembled his strategy review team for an introductory, organizational one-hour meeting. The group of about a dozen gathered in Room 208óknown as the Cordell Hull Roomóof the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across from the White House.
Crouch, O'Sullivan and her top Iraq staff represented the NSC. Bill Luti, the senior defense director on the NSC staff who had authored the feasibility study of a surge the previous month, also attended.
For State, Rice had appointed Zelikow and Satterfield. Rumsfeld had designated Steve Cambone, a longtime aide and the current undersecretary for Pentagon intelligence, and Peter Rodman, an assistant secretary of defense. Pace sent two lieutenant generalsóDoug Lute, the head of operations for the Joint Staff, and John Sattler, the Joint Staff's head of plans and policy. David Gordon, vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, represented the director of national intelligence (DNI).
John Hannah, Cheney's national security adviser, represented the vice president's office. He made it clear that anything he asked, said or wrote would reflect only his personal views and not necessarily those of Cheney, who, as they all
knew, offered his views directly to the president.
Crouch handed out binders that included O'Sullivan's long paper on the four constructs, or options: adjust at the margins; target our effort; double down; bet on Maliki. A cover sheet noted that the four were not mutually exclusive. They could mix and match as they saw fit.
The group would get down to business the next day.
* * *
On Thursday, November 16, General Casey gave an update to Rumsfeld by secure video teleconference. He had no role in Crouch's strategy review and had become so out of the loop, it seemed as if he were speaking from another planet. Casey had learned that Rumsfeld was leaving just before Bush announced it the week before. Considering that they shared the same basic view of the war, he was sorry to see the secretary go.
"Bottom line up front," he told Rumsfeld. "We are in a position in the campaign where accelerating and completing the transition of security responsibility to capable Iraqi security forces is both strategically appropriate and feasible.
"Enduring strategic success will be achieved by the Iraqis." His SECRET briefing paper had read, "It will take longer than we want." But Casey edited out the last three words.
"We are two-thirds of the way through a three-step process to bring the Iraqis to the point where they can credibly assume responsibility by the end of 2007 with some lower level of support from us." That was a year away. He listed four possible options: "acceleration of the transition to Iraqi control; reinforcement; status quo"; and the almost forbidden notion of a "fixed withdrawal schedule."
* * *
About this time, General Abizaid passed word to Casey that the White House was thinking about a surge of more U.S. brigades to Iraq. The question immediately arose: What would Casey do with more brigades? Neither he nor Abizaid wanted them, but they agreed that Casey had better ask his subordinates. Casey and Lieutenant General Pete Chiarelli, the corps commander for all U.S. forces in Iraq, met with the new Baghdad commander, Major General Joseph F. Fil Jr.
"We have to secure Baghdad," Casey said. "We have to do that now. We have to. We've tried twice." He was referring to the two summer operations, Together Forward I and II, which had failed. "It hasn't worked. Third time's got to be the charm, man, or we're in big shit." Casey turned to Fil. "Take a blank sheet of paper. Tell us what the hell we need to do to help you guys secure Baghdad."
Fil, a boyish-looking combat veteran with 30 years in the Army, came back with a request for two more brigadesóabout 7,000 more troops. That way, he said, he could put a battalion of 600 to 1,000 with a larger Iraqi brigade in each of Baghdad's 10 districts. Casey wasn't surprised. Fil was new to his position, and it was natural that he would be inclined to rely on his own forces rather than on the Iraqis. Even though he didn't want to bring one more soldier than necessary into the Baghdad troop sump, Casey decided to go along with Fil and began the formal process of an RFFóRequest for Forces.
* * *
Rice kept in close contact with Zelikow and Satterfield as they worked the White House strategy review. They told her that the "double down" option for more forces seemed to have little backing, except with the NSC staff. "What are more forces going to do?" Rice asked. "Are they just going to get into a civil conflict? Are we going to put our people between Iraqis fighting old problems and then have the Iraqis pull the rug out from under them?" Zelikow and Satterfield had been working on a memo outlining what they felt was a realistic view. They hoped the White House strategy review would offer a change that would be seen as an outreach to Congress, accommodate the Baker-Hamilton study group and even give Democrats some cover for compromise.
They wanted to get their say in early, so the final version of their 12-page SECRET paper was circulated Friday, November 17. Crouch, O'Sullivan and the others read it with great interest, knowing it would reflect the views of Rice, still probably the person closest to the president.
"The original objectives of America's invasion of Iraq have been substantially accomplished," the memo began. "The key choices about the future of the country must now be made by Iraqis." Zelikow and Satterfield advocated "a more traditional state-to-state relationship" that is "more arm's length." The Green Zone, where U.S. and Iraqi government officials were holed up, has "limited relevance and reach" elsewhere in Iraq.
"Foreign troops are wearing out their welcome," they wrote. "Most Iraqis resent the U.S. presence," which is "rapidly becoming either an irritant or irrelevant."
In boldface, they added, "We may actually recover leverage and achieve greater success by stepping back, picking our spots and being willing to withhold aid."
If the Iraqi leaders continue to support sectarian violence and "organized campaigns of mass killings or mass expulsions, we would announce and execute a withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq, along with our civilian support for the Iraqi government. We believe the credible threat of such an action would be effective." As part of an incentive, they suggested, "The United States would offer to protect Prime Minister Maliki's government against the Baathist coup he fears."
O'Sullivan thought it sounded like a proposal for "a graceful defeat," representing the State Department view that the United States had very little ability to impact the narrative in Iraq, and that the goals had to be much more modest.
After all the treasure committed and lives lost over three and a half years, she argued it was simply unacceptable not to try everything possible to achieve success.
Bill Luti, who had drafted a concept for a surge, was equally appalled by the State paper. It was a recipe for defeat and a dishonorable exit, in his view.
Satterfield disagreed with any suggestion that the State paper was defeatist or timid. He thought the paper offered the clearest outline of realistic options and consequences.
Zelikow's argument was "We actually kind of need to get out of the center of their politics and force them to take the responsibility of having to sort these things out for themselves." Take the Iraqi army, for instance. The United States was essentially running itóhad become the general staff, the logisticians, providers of everything from intelligence to food.
"What are our no-shit, bottom-line objectives and interests in Iraq?" Satterfield asked. He repeated his view that U.S.
national security interests had suffered because of the "myopic focus on Iraq, defining everything that is happening in the world by Iraq." Iraq had become the lens through which they were seeing everything, he said, "and increasingly, the United States is being judged as a success or a failureóstrategically dominant or weakóbecause of Iraq." He said they needed to "draw back the lens" and see the entire world.
During the earlier, less formal review, Meghan O'Sullivan's group had discussed what could be done if the sectarian violence reached genocidal levels, what Rice called "a Srebrenica-style massacre," resembling the wave of ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian city of Srebrenica, which fell to the Serbs in 1995 during the Clinton administration. An estimated 8,000 men and boys were slaughtered, scores of women and girls raped, and tens of thousands forced to flee.
Violence was bad in Iraq, but it did not yet include mass executions by the thousands.
"How do you protect civilian populations against a Srebrenica-style massacre," Crouch asked, "while you're standing back and standing down forces?"
Satterfield thought it was a valid question. They could send stern political messages to the Iraqi leaders or threaten to pull out.
"Guys," Crouch told Zelikow and Satterfield, "your argument really is a weak one here."
The pair mustered every conceivable argument against a surge, or a "double down" option. It simply wouldn't work, they said. America didn't have the resources. "We don't think this is right," Satterfield said.
The Defense Department team and the two generals from the Joint Staff also opposed the surge. "There's got to be a political process here," said General Lute. "And you guys keep saying that the application of forces will create space for political process. Well, I don't see the
linkage."
Finally, Hadley showed up. "You have got to give the president the option of a surge in forces," he told the group.
"You present him everything else you're talking about, but I'm telling you, you have got to give him that option of a surge in forces. He will want to see it, and he'll want to know what it means. You all can take your positions for or against or in between, but you have to present him that as an option."
Hadley didn't say that Bush had already decided. But they all knew that when Hadley spoke emphatically, he was a pure transmission belt for Bush's views.
* * *
With Rumsfeld a lame duck and Gates yet to be confirmed as his successor, there was a vacuum at Defense. Hadley rushed to fill it. He told General Pace that the president wanted a surge option. Pace, ever dutiful, had the Joint Staff conduct an analysis: What was the maximum amount of troops available? The answer came back that the Army could provide five additional brigades temporarily. That was it.
* * *
On November 18, the Defense Department representatives, led by Steve Cambone, presented a six-page SECRET strategy paper to Crouch's review group. It was material recycled from Rumsfeld, Abizaid and Casey. "Accelerate the transition to self-reliance," the paper said. "Transition security responsibilities to the government of Iraq in 2007." The only new idea was a proposal to triple the number of teams working on the transition.
The others could see the hands of the Defense representatives had been tied by Rumsfeld, even though he was on his way out.
The SECRET paper from the two Joint Staff generals was five pages long and contained some sharp language and pessimism. "If we do not adjust our strategy," they wrote, "the result could be the fragmentation of Iraq, escalating sectarian violence, a strengthening insurgency and a destructive civil war that could spill over into neighboring countries."
The War Within Page 24