Bob Woodward

by State of Denial (lit)

  Blackwill was pretty sure Bush was calculating the potential impact on the presidential election. A cornerstone of his Iraq policy was the transfer of sovereignty. The June 30 transfer date had been announced as a sign of great progress. If there was no one to take the reins of government, Bush's policy would be in even more trouble.

  The assault was called off, but the Marines were ordered to stay around the city and lay siege, hopefully trapping the insurgents inside.

  We just can't let them melt away and leave Fallujah, the president said. At least they're inside there. It almost became a preoccupation for him.

  At the White House, Frank Miller went over the situation with Blackwill, who told him they were going to keep the Marines in place.

  We're taking wounded, Miller objected. We're getting people killed. You cannot maintain the morale of a unit by saying we're going to encircle the city and just get shot at. You can't do it, Bob.

  Well, show me the numbers of killed and wounded, Blackwill said. He was extremely skeptical that the casualties were high.

  Bob, you've not served, Miller said, aghast. I was a naval officer. I have not served on the ground, but I know these guys. You can't expect them to live in the dirt with no showers for weeks at a time and all they're going to be doing is thinking, 'I'm a target.'

  Blackwill singled out some of the generals. They don't know what they are doing, he complained at one point. Why are we losing soldiers to IEDs? Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, were homemade bombs made from old munitions, artillery shells or other explosives. They were the terrorist weapon of choice. Insurgents camouflaged them ingeniously and hid them on roads, in mounds of garbage and even the carcasses of dead animals. They were the chief killer of U.S. personnel. Why are we driving around? Blackwill said. We ought to get off the roads. What are the missions that these people are on that put them on the roads where they get blown up? Are they just driving from one place to another?

  Bob, you have a force here, and a force here and a logistics base here, Miller said. You have to resupply your posts.

  Let's do it all by air, Blackwill suggested.

  Miller felt this suggestion betrayed a complete lack of understanding of what the troops needed and what life was like in a violent foreign outpost. A hundred mini-Berlin Airlifts all around the hostile Iraqi countryside would be eminently impractical.

  At one point Blackwill and Bremer went out to the Fallujah region. For them the stand-down was a vivid example—the most dramatic example—proving that the United States simply did not have enough troops in Iraq. With more troops, Fallujah could have been taken fairly quickly, they thought, fast enough that they could have held the Governing Council together until it was over.

  Around the same time, the CIA came up with what seemed to be a middle course. A renegade Baathist two-star who had served in the Republican Guard said he could form a Fallujah Brigade of Iraqis and clean out the city. The general, Jassim Mohammed Saleh, appeared on television wearing a dark green uniform and beret. When Rice saw his pictures, she screeched, Oh, God. He looks like Saddam Hussein! Can't they pick somebody who doesn't look like Saddam?

  The ineffectual Iraqi Fallujah Brigade eventually folded. After a few months, its members largely joined the insurgents.

  Blackwill kept in close contact with the Kurds in the north. Massoud Barzani, one of the two chief Kurdish leaders, told him that the United States had made a terrible mistake trying to draw the Sunnis into the political process. The Sunnis, so used to ruling in Iraq, had to be defeated and crushed. They had to be told they were going to pay a price for their brutality against the rest—the Kurds and Shiites. After the Sunnis were totally defeated and isolated, then and only then could the United States afford to be magnanimous, Barzani said.

  The withdrawal from Fallujah was a serious strategic failure, Barzani said. That was a disaster because you broadcast to every potential Sunni insurgent that they can wait you out, that if they cause enough casualties to you, you won't go through with it. There was an answer to this.

  Massoud, what was the answer? Blackwill inquired.

  The pesh merga, he said, referring to the formidable Kurdish militia of some 50,000 or more fighters. You should have just asked us to send 30,000 pesh merga to Fallujah. If your Marines couldn't do it, let the pesh go.

  It was only several hundred miles from the Kurdish north to Fallujah.

  Well, Blackwill replied, sounds to me like a recipe for civil war, the Kurds clean up Sunni Fallujah.

  Short term that may be a problem, Barzani agreed, but it's not as serious as the long term—the lesson you're teaching these Sunnis, which is they can beat you.

  Blackwill came to believe that the low troop level had another consequence. The professional Iraqi officers—the Sunni majors and lieutenant colonels in their late 30s and early 40s—had been stunned by their defeat and had been completely intimidated by the U.S. blitzkrieg. Rumsfeld's rapid, decisive warfare had worked. But Blackwill felt that the U.S. had not killed enough of the Iraqi officer corps. They had stayed out of the initial insurgency, but Fallujah and the steady growth of the violence and attacks had caused them to think this insurgency might have legs, and might put them back in the saddle. Now those who had been sitting on the sidelines were helping the insurgency or joining up.

  Unless this gets over pretty soon, Bremer told Blackwill, we're not going to be able to finish.

  Back at the White House and the NSC, Blackwill told Rice and Hadley that the NSC needed to do a military review. What was the military strategy? What were the military deployments and troop levels?

  Rice voiced agreement and expressed immense frustration at Rumsfeld and the Pentagon, but never said she would force the issue. Blackwill, who still often referred to himself as Godzilla, was no shrinking flower. As Rice's former boss in Bush senior's NSC, he had an opportunity to press. But he didn't want to be so coarse as to ask, Well, what are you going to do about it? Rice had put up a slight wall, and Blackwill wanted to be careful not to be seen as trying to penetrate her relationship with the president.

  Blackwill also pressed Hadley about the military strategy. If we have a military strategy, I can't identify it, the deputy national security adviser said. I don't know what's worse—that they have one and won't tell us or that they don't have one.

  And then there was poor Frank Miller, Blackwill thought, trying to find solutions. Miller was indefatigable, trying to help the troops in Iraq moving electrical generators or guarding pipelines or securing transportation routes. Blackwill figured he wasn't being paid enough to ever go to any of Miller's meetings. They were exercises in frustration and futility.

  It had taken Blackwill a while to understand what was really wrong, but now he felt he fully comprehended. There was no way that Rice, Hadley, Miller or he could fix Iraq because they had no control over the real problem: There were not enough troops. Everyone got diverted, trying to solve derivatives of the real problem. But those problems couldn't be solved until somebody fixed the real problem of not having enough troops on the ground.

  Instead of the top 10 to-do list he'd wanted after he had come back from Iraq in March, Miller's reconstituted Executive Steering Group now had a list of 90 things that were supposed to be completed by June 30, a few months away, when the transfer of sovereignty was scheduled. That's useless, he said again. We need to pick out the 10 most important. Chairing the ESG was frustrating. Defense was increasingly out of it. Feith sent a different person from his policy staff each time. When Feith came, he'd refuse to discuss issues, saying he hadn't talked with Rumsfeld about them and so, of course, he couldn't engage. Then he'd come back with Rumsfeld's inflexible position.

  Miller thought he'd never seen a group of people less able to advance their own interests. In the field the division commanders knew what needed to be done, but they weren't getting support. Where is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dick Myers? Miller wondered. Why wasn't Myers pounding the table saying, Why aren't my soldiers
being supported?

  Miller noticed that Rumsfeld had a short attention span at the White House meetings. Someone droned on about an issue, covering it thoroughly, and then Rumsfeld would suggest that they ought to talk about the same issue.

  He's a bully, Miller said to Rice one day.

  Oh, no.

  Condi, come on. It's me.

  Don's Don. We'll deal with it, she said one time. It was pretty clear to Miller that challenging Rumsfeld was outside her boundaries.

  In April 2004, my book Plan of Attack was published. It reported that three months before the war, Tenet had twice told the president in an Oval Office meeting that the intelligence case on Iraq's WMD was a slam dunk. The colorful scene of the CIA director raising his hands to mimic the basketball going through the hoop drew lots of attention. I had quoted the president on the record in the book confirming that Tenet had made such assertions.

  Tenet called Andy Card and complained bitterly that sensitive Oval Office conversations were being quoted to a reporter.

  Tenet shared his anger with Armitage.

  George, Armitage said, it's over. It's gone. Someone reports it, it's the last thing you have to worry about.

  George, Armitage said, I'm your friend. I'm not criticizing you. But this is Washington. One ‘Aw, shit' wipes out ten ‘Atta boys.' Period. It was nasty, mean, unfair, but true, and not something to worry too much about.

  Tenet did worry. The trust was gone.

  Tenet later claimed he did not remember saying slam dunk, though he did not dispute it. He asserted that the meeting was to determine what intelligence could be made public to market the case for war. That is correct, as I reported in Plan of Attack. But a public case for war could hardly be a slam dunk if the CIA director did not believe that the underlying intelligence was also a slam dunk. Obviously, Tenet had believed it was. Since the National Intelligence Estimate of three months earlier had flatly asserted that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, it is not surprising that Tenet was a believer. He has a strong case when he asserts that his slam dunk assertion did not cause the president to decide on war. Tenet believes Bush had already made the decision.

  A year after Plan of Attack was published I attended a public forum in Los Angeles at which Tenet was asked before a crowd of 5,000 about the slam dunk comment.

  Those are the two dumbest words I ever said, he replied.

  28

  in late April, 60 Minutes II broadcast photographs of naked, hooded and even leashed inmates being piled up or harshly interrogated at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, as smiling American military guards watched. Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker published details of a secret Army investigation documenting the detainee abuse. Dozens of deranged and despicable prisoner photographs flooded television screens, newspapers and the Internet.

  Rumsfeld and General Myers downplayed the importance. Rumsfeld stated publicly he had not looked at the pictures. I think I did inquire about the pictures and was told that we didn't have copies, he said. Myers, on one of the Sunday shows, was asked if he had seen the Army investigation on Abu Ghraib. I haven't seen that report, he replied.

  Bush Privately Chides Rumsfeld was The Washington Post front-page headline on May 6, 2004. The story recounted that the president had admonished Rumsfeld over the Abu Ghraib scandal and that he was unsatisfied and unhappy with Rumsfeld's handling of the matter.

  Rumsfeld wondered to his staff how in the hell anyone at the White House could possibly think it would help the president to have this kind of chatter and whispering campaign going on. There was always someone at the White House who thought it was high political art to have the president show he was tough with cabinet secretaries and could kick them around. How could it possibly help a war president to have his secretary of defense perceived to be in trouble or weakened, somehow suspect, lacking presidential full confidence ? The president, and everyone, needed clarity. If it was time for him to go, then he would go, Rumsfeld said. He decided to force clarity.

  The next day, May 7, the secretary testified in public before Congress. Asked if he would resign, he answered, It's a fair question. Since the firestorm started, I have given a good deal of thought to the question. He also told the House Armed Services Committee, If I thought that I could not be effective, I certainly wouldn't want to serve. And I have to wrestle with that.

  The coy suggestion that he hadn't decided triggered calls to Rumsfeld's aides from the White House almost as soon as the words left Rumsfeld's mouth.

  The next day The New York Times reported in its front-page story that Rice might not be unhappy if Rumsfeld resigned. An unidentified person close to Rice was quoted as saying that Rumsfeld appears to have become a liability for the president, and has complicated the mission in Iraq.

  Two days later, Monday, May 10, Bush went to the Pentagon and met with Rumsfeld, who offered to resign.

  Just before noon, Bush appeared in public with Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and General Myers.

  Turning to Rumsfeld, he said, You're doing a superb job. You are a strong secretary of defense, and our nation owes you a debt of gratitude.

  I submitted my resignation in writing twice, Rumsfeld recalled in an interview. He handed the first one back and he said, 'No.' And the second one he handed back and I handed it back to him and I said, 'You ought to keep this.' And he said, 'No.' You know, he did not want me to go. And he says this publicly.

  I asked Rumsfeld what was in the two letters. One was a relatively short letter, and the other was a relatively long letter. He would say no more.

  With the approaching transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, Powell turned his attention to opening an embassy in Baghdad. It was an opportunity, a treacherous one. Under normal conditions an American embassy means the State Department is the lead agency. But conditions were nowhere close to normal. It was hard to tell what might happen, and Powell wanted to be ready. Months earlier he had called in Armitage and Frank Ricciardone, the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and a 26-year foreign service veteran.

  Look, this has got to be a full-court press, Powell had ordered, and a very organized effort because these guys are leaving a mess and they're leaving it for us. And we've got to be ready by the summer to take this over and not screw it up.

  Who should be the new U.S. ambassador? The White House, the Pentagon and Powell all began making lists.

  John Negroponte, 64, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, decided he wanted the job. Negroponte was from the old school of foreign service. There was almost no one like him anymore. His role models were Ellsworth Bunker and Henry Cabot Lodge, the U.S. ambassadors in Vietnam who had slugged it out, fighting an insurgency and civil war. In his twenties, Negroponte had worked in the U.S. embassy in Saigon from 1964 to 1968, and he believed ambassadors were the executors of programs and policies made by others. He had been Powell's deputy when Powell was Reagan's national security adviser almost two decades earlier. Most of his 40-year career had been spent in the Third World. He had been U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Mexico and the Philippines. He was used to bad and ineffective governments. He thought Garner and Bremer had been a little starry-eyed in thinking that they could reconstruct the country quickly. The first order of business had to be reestablishing central authority in the Iraqi government.

  He called Powell. Diana and I have been talking about this, Negroponte said, referring to his wife. I know you're looking for names, and I would do it if you asked me.

  A volunteer! One of the unwritten rules in the Army Powell had served in for 35 years was never to volunteer. But he considered Negroponte a consummate diplomat. Being ambassador to the United Nations was hard duty in the Bush administration. Powell thought Negroponte had performed extremely well, working within the U.N. system, and listening to Powell's instructions. When it had looked to Rice that Powell and the U.N. ambassador were getting too international, she sent Elliott Abrams to watch Negroponte. Powell thought she was aiming to stiffen the spine of the striped-pants set
.

  I can't stand this, Negroponte once told Powell. I don't want it.

  John, Powell replied soothingly, let him go up there. He'll see that you're doing your job. He'll be an occasional annoyance. But it keeps us from getting rudder checks all day long, which we would, if he wasn't there. Negroponte survived Elliott Abrams.

  When Powell floated Negroponte's name at the White House, it was not immediately embraced. But he had done well in over two years at the U.N., and his standing at the White House had improved. The consensus was they had no one better, and besides, he had volunteered.

  The president had one question for Negroponte: Do you believe democracy is possible in Iraq?

  The ambassador gave a diplomat's answer. I don't believe it's beyond the wit of man.

  Powell and Negroponte tapped James F. Jeffrey, the U.S. ambassador to Albania, for the number two position in the new embassy— deputy chief of mission—in Baghdad. Jeffrey had been deputy in the U.S. embassies in Turkey and Kuwait. A career foreign service officer, he had served eight years in the Army, including Vietnam. A 6-foot-3-inch Bostonian with a head of thinning white hair, and an amiable, lumbering gait, Jeffrey spoke quickly and directly. He had no love for the slowness of government bureaucracy.

  Jeffrey went to Baghdad early so that he would overlap with Bremer for about six weeks before Negroponte arrived. He reported home, We're standing up an embassy for this crazy goddamn CPA thing in the midst of this burlesque palace, being shelled every day—a really bad nightmare.

  He immediately recognized that Bremer had an acrimonious relationship with General Sanchez, who did not want to play defense with the insurgency. The general resisted securing the route out to the airport and he didn't want to establish perimeter defenses. Jeffrey understood the U.S. Army was a highly offense-oriented organism that hated peacekeeping, civil action, training other forces and playing defense.