Bob Woodward

by State of Denial (lit)

  At a meeting with Abizaid and many senior staffers at the Central Command headquarters in Qatar that week, Garner explained that he planned to follow right behind the combat units as they moved into Iraq.

  Oh, really? thought one of the staff officers, Colonel Carol Stewart, the head of Central Command's intelligence plans division. She wondered whether Garner understood that the war plan didn't include taking and holding cities. We're not planning on taking Basra and Nasiriyah. We're going straight to Baghdad.

  Who's providing security in Iraq? Stewart asked. Garner said he expected the Iraqi police would still be on the job. That didn't sound right at all to Stewart, but she held her words since there were so many higher-ranking officers in the room.

  Over the previous month or so, Stewart's intelligence plans division had tried to project how many troops would be needed to accomplish a peacekeeping mission in Iraq, based on the Army's experience in Bosnia and Kosovo. Their estimate was 450,000. But nobody was thinking about troop levels that high, so they worked through some other options. What if, instead of trying to occupy the entire country, they instead focused on the key Iraqi cities? On the low end, they concluded, if the situation in Iraq awaiting American forces was completely peaceful, with the total consent of the Iraqis to an American occupation, they would need at least 60,000 troops. At the other extreme, with lots of opposition and fighting among the Iraqi ethnic groups, an estimated 180,000 to 200,000 troops would be required to secure just the 26 or 27 most important cities.

  Later that day, in a smaller meeting with Garner and other senior officers, Stewart spoke a little more freely. The Central Command intelligence estimate said there would be no Iraqi police on the job once the U.S. passed through, she stressed.

  What do you mean, no police? one of the generals asked.

  It's like Panama, she replied, referring to the 1989 U.S. invasion of that country with some 24,000 troops. When the Americans had toppled the government and the local army, the police force had ceased to exist. In Iraq, the same thing was likely to happen.

  She turned to Garner. You just told us that you'd follow the combat forces. That is not a good idea.

  There was more difficult news. One officer pointed out that if they wanted to keep the police and other civil servants on the job after the invasion, somebody had to come up with a way to keep paying them.

  Garner turned to Bates. We're going to have to go back to D.C. and get a checkbook, he said.

  Bates kept in touch with Abizaid in the coming months and they had more than a handful of meetings. Abizaid continued to express dismay about Washington. It was more than the field man expressing the classic gripe about headquarters. After one formal meeting, Bates and Abizaid talked as old friends. You know, Abizaid said, these bastards in Washington have got no idea what they're doing, and I think I'm going to retire. I don't want any more part of this.

  13

  vice President Cheney was seized with what he thought was a connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, but the CIA disagreed. Tenet and his people had gone over the intelligence as completely as they could. There was no proof, he said plainly. True, a Jordanian named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had strong al Qaeda ties, was involved in various terrorist activities inside Iraq. He had been given sanctuary there by the Saddam regime. But there was no evidence to show that Saddam himself, someone on his behalf, or someone in the Iraqi intelligence or security services was involved with Zarqawi.

  I can't take you to authority, direction and control, Tenet said. That was the high standard that had to be met to make a case for a Saddam-al Qaeda link.

  Powell was set to go before the United Nations on February 5, 2003, to make the WMD intelligence case for war, and Cheney wanted him to look at the argument his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, had assembled charging a link between Saddam and al Qaeda. The case included an allegation that Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attacks, had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer as many as four times. Tenet's CIA had chased down some indications about one or two meetings, but nothing had been confirmed. In the end they had concluded there was no evidence of even a single meeting.

  Powell thought the Atta link didn't exist and he refused to include it in his speech. He also toned down the references to Zarqawi in his forthcoming U.N. speech. He planned to talk only about the potential for an Iraq-al Qaeda link.

  Spider Marks's deputy, Colonel Rotkoff, watched on TV from the Kuwaiti desert on February 5 as Powell addressed the U.N. Despite his firsthand knowledge of the state of the WMDMSL target folders, Rotkoff hadn't really doubted that Saddam had the prohibited weapons. Seeing Powell, the retired four-star who was widely respected in the military, put his credibility on the line and make the case only added to Rotkoff's conviction. They had everything but ironclad evidence.

  Every Sunday in Kuwait, as they waited for war, Rotkoff organized informal, invitation-only gatherings for the smartest officers in Spider Marks's intelligence shop. These meetings, which soon took on the nickname Sunday Afternoon Prayer Sessions, were relaxed working sessions where they'd scrounge pizza and near beer and try to encourage a freewheeling, informal discussion with fresh ideas. Spider Marks and the other generals were never invited so that the officers would not be afraid of taking a chance, thinking out loud or saying something stupid in front of their bosses.

  One Sunday in early 2003, Colonel Steve Peterson, a brainy Army officer with a reputation for creative thinking, asked Rotkoff if he could lead a Prayer Session.

  Saddam Hussein's 'Black Hawk Down' Strategy, Peterson's PowerPoint presentation began. The reference was to Mark Bowden's celebrated book Black Hawk Down about the 1993 Somalia debacle when 18 U.S. servicemen were killed in close-encounter urban warfare, leading President Clinton to withdraw U.S. troops. Somalia had come to symbolize America's apparent unwillingness to incur casualties.

  Peterson proposed that their operating premise about Saddam's strategy of retreat to a Fortress Baghdad might be all wrong. What if Saddam instead planned to have his units melt away, only to resurface periodically and randomly attack U.S. forces, creating a long-term insurgency? Saddam would have to know that U.S. forces had far superior equipment, men and tactics. Eventually they would break through a Fortress Baghdad. But what if Saddam got smart, and saw that his better strategy was a campaign of small, sophisticated attacks by Iraqis—a kind of continuous, random, urban terrorism? That way U.S. forces would have to contend with unending violence, with little knowledge of who was carrying it out, or where or when they might strike.

  Peterson said his hypothesis derived from the following:

  First, some U.S. intelligence showed that Saddam had commissioned an Arabic translation of Black Hawk Down and issued copies to his senior officers. We've always assumed this was supposed to buck up his senior leaders' morale, Peterson said, to show that if you kill a few Americans, the United States will go home. But what if the real lesson Saddam takes from Black Hawk Down is that insurgents can have local tactical successes against a far superior military force?

  Second, in October 2002, Saddam had opened Iraq's prisons, freeing tens of thousands of inmates—both political prisoners and common criminals. What if the idea was that they'd form bands of troublemakers or be individual agents of disruption?

  Third, there was evidence of widespread conventional weapons caches all over Iraq—firearms and explosives, the types of weapons that would be especially useful to insurgents.

  Fourth, Saddam's Baath Party organization in each town somewhat resembled the classic Communist cell structure, built on loose, informal and personal relationships quite effective for communications in guerrilla insurgencies.

  Add it all up, Peterson said, and a logical strategy for Saddam might be to run and hide, and use the Baathist cell structure to develop an insurgent army that would have weapons and explosives for a prolonged fight until the Americans grew exhausted and lost their political will.

  Peterson's theory was radical. It flew
in the face of all the war planning predicated on a quick defeat of Saddam's army. Rotkoff recognized that it took a lot of confidence to push a contrary possibility, especially this late in the planning game. Everyone else in the room at the Prayer Session seemed to think it was not very feasible. The Black Hawk Down Strategy was just another theory.

  On February 14, the president met with the NSC and Franks. A question arose about protecting the Iraqi oil wells during and after the invasion.

  How do you determine if you keep local policemen? the president asked.

  Franks was reassuring. According to the notes of one person at the NSC meeting, the general told Bush, I have created lord mayors for each Iraqi city. I have the forces in place to do this tomorrow. The implication was that he had Iraqis ready to run the police.

  • • •

  Garner spoke with Lieutenant General George Casey, the director of the Joint Staff, to request 94 people for his postwar operations. In 2004-06, as a four-star, Casey would be the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

  That's a lot of people, Casey said. Let me look at it.

  Garner and his chief of staff, Bates, pressed Casey.

  Look, George, Bates said. Time's running out on us. We have to have these people. Have you requisitioned them?

  No, Casey replied. I haven't done that because you guys are trying to convince me this is a 24/7 operation and I don't believe it.

  George, Garner said. You're out of your mind. You don't think this is 24/7?

  No, Casey replied.

  Garner called Casey again. Hey, George. This is hardball time now. He proposed a meeting in Rumsfeld's office at 5 p.m. that day. We'll battle this out in front of him, because I've got to have these people.

  About an hour later, the head of personnel for the Joint Staff called Garner. How many people do you need?

  Garner, with responsibility for all of postwar Iraq, the most important matter being undertaken by the U.S. government, was essentially being forced to assemble a pickup team of several hundred and go beg, cajole and threaten to get his players.

  In 2006, I mentioned to Rumsfeld that I thought for some reason the government assigned a pickup team the most important thing that they were doing, and asked, Is that fair?

  Oh, I wouldn't think so, he said, noting that many talented people volunteered, went to Iraq, and did the tough jobs. You can be pejorative and say it's a pickup team. But it wasn't a pickup team at all. He suggested that I would be embarrassed in history if I drew such a comparison. As your old friend says, he added, attempting to imitate Nixon's voice, That would be wrong.

  Garner also recruited Gordon Rudd, a retired Army colonel who had been the official military historian for Provide Comfort in 1991. Rudd had a Ph.D. in history and lived near the Marine Corps Base at Quantico, Virginia, where he was a professor at the command and staff college. Working for Garner, he would hit the road about 5 a.m. each day to beat the snarled Virginia traffic to the Pentagon, work as many as 14 hours a day, and basically let the assignment take over his life.

  Gordon, Garner called out to him in a Pentagon hallway. Write me a paper on what we should do with the Iraqi army.

  Rudd took a day, went to the library, and read everything he could find about what the U.S. had done with the German and Japanese armies at the end of World War II. He also researched how the U.S. had used its own military during the New Deal, developing things such as the Civilian Conservation Corps. He wrote a paper theorizing that if the Iraqi army had armor and artillery units, it must also have engineering and maintenance units. That meant it must have military schools—an engineering school, a transportation school, maybe even a medical school.

  What they should do, he wrote, was run the Iraqi infantry units through schools that taught specific reconstruction tasks—mine-clearing school, or explosive-ordnance-disposal school.

  But Rudd soon found out that nobody knew where the Iraqi military schools were, which meant it was almost impossible to put together a practical plan. He worked with an Army intelligence colonel and put in requests for more information to the DIA and the CIA, but the response they got back was simply, We just don't know.

  People began flowing from various federal departments and agencies into Garner's Pentagon B-ring offices. It resembled one of those stock, rushed preparation scenes in the old World War II movies with everyone hyperactive, focused and knowing their assignments. But Garner could see that it was chaotic. Few knew who was working on what. Everyone was moving but it was not clear where anyone was going.

  What we're going to do is, we're going to do a rock drill, Garner said, using an old Army term for a field commander's technique of diagramming a military plan on the ground using rocks to represent the various units.

  The weekend of February 21-22, Garner gathered some 200 people at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in southwest Washington, D.C., for a massive rehearsal and planning conference.

  Throughout the weekend, two questions went unanswered during all the presentations, PowerPoint slides and discussions: Who was going to be in charge of Iraq the day after the serious combat ended? And, was there an Iraqi political process that could be tapped to help recruit people who could provide the basics—security, water, electricity—matters that are normally the responsibility of a mayor in an American city?

  Shortly after the rock drill, one participant who had spoken with Garner and other key staffers analyzed the conference in a 20-page report. The analysis identified numerous planning problems a month before the war. In retrospect, it provides stark and contemporaneous warnings:

  • Current force packages are inadequate for the first step of securing all the major urban areas, let alone for providing interim police. . . . We risk letting much of the country descend into civil

  unrest [and] chaos whose magnitude may defeat our national

  strategy of a stable new Iraq, and more immediately, we place

  our own troops, fully engaged in the forward fight, in greater

  jeopardy.

  • It seems likely that we will begin military action before we

  know whether sufficient Phase IV funds will be available. If

  fewer funds are available than required, we risk leaving behind a

  great unstable mess with potential to become a haven for terrorists.

  • In field after field, the ideas, as briefed, suggest a heavy-handed

  imperial take-over. Danger, danger!

  • The conference did not take up the most basic issue: What sort

  of future government of Iraq do we have in mind, and how do we

  plan to get there?

  • With no sufficient plan for police from U.S. troops or a civilian

  government of Iraq, What happens to law and order in the

  meantime?

  The memo went on to explain that Garner himself had introduced at the rock drill the notion of what he called Show Stoppers—problems, if not solved, place mission at risk.

  This Danger, danger! memo identified several such Show Stoppers.

  Security, was one. This is far and away the greatest challenge, and the greatest shortfall. If we do not get it right, we may change the regime, but the national strategy will likely fall apart and our troops on the ground will be in jeopardy.

  This complete dearth of needed forces, coupled with the security exigencies we will no doubt face on the ground, make for a very disturbing picture indeed. Fortunately, Gen. Garner is as aware as anyone of the seriousness and urgency of this issue. He stated flatly that the issue is crucial and that we do not have enough forces, and he added he will be taking the issue up this week with SECDEF and NSA Dr. Rice. . . . This should help, particularly should Dr. Rice choose to take the most serious matters—security and cost—to POTUS. POTUS stood for President of the United States.

  Garner and his team emerged from the rock drill very troubled. His second in command in the postwar planning group, another retired Army three-star, Ron Adams, wrote in his
notes: Faulty assumptions. Overly optimistic. Lack of reality. Later, Adams recalled, I personally came out of the rock drill far more concerned than when I went in, and I was uneasy right from the get-go.

  During the first morning of the rock drill, Garner had noticed one person who found fault with everything. A real spring-butt, Garner thought, someone who kept popping up out of his seat with something to say on every topic. When they took a break, Garner walked up to him.

  Let me talk to you, he said.

  I'm Tom Warrick, said the man, a 48-year-old State Department civil servant.

  How do you know so damn much?

  Well, I've been studying this stuff for the last year and a half, Warrick said.

  Oh yeah? Who've you been studying it for?

  The State Department, Warrick replied, and said he'd written a long report on postwar Iraq. It's called the 'Future of Iraq' study.

  That was very interesting, Garner thought. He had heard vaguely about the study.

  Why aren't you over here working for me?

  I'd like to work for you, Warrick said.

  You're hired, Garner told him. Be there Monday morning and bring all your stuff.

  The Monday after the rock drill, Warrick showed up at the Pentagon. By noon, Garner noticed that half the people working with Warrick were mad at him. Garner was delighted. They needed someone like that, challenging everyone, keeping them on their toes and engaged. He runs around and sandpapers everyone, Garner recalled later. Garner read much of the Future of Iraq study, didn't agree with all of it, but felt it was sufficiently provocative to be useful.

  A few days later, Garner was summoned to Rumsfeld's office for a big get-together with Wolfowitz, General Myers and the vice chairman of the JCS, Marine General Pete Pace.

  Hey, Jay —Rumsfeld leaned over at one point— when it's all over, how about staying? I have a couple of things I need to go over.