Bob Woodward

by State of Denial (lit)

  The lone Iraqi voice saying go ahead with the elections was the Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Sistani. The Shiites had waited long enough. They wanted democracy. They wanted to exercise their political muscle.

  It's really important to have the election on January 30, the president said at an NSC meeting November 29. Some of the NSC principals were wavering and could have been talked into postponing, including Hadley. But Bush never invited anyone to offer reasons for delaying.

  Everyone is for going ahead, right? the president said. It wasn't really a question.

  There was silence.

  Thank you for being strong, he continued, proceeding as if the silence equaled consensus. We gain nothing from delay. Sistani is right. Look, here's the situation I'm in. I've got the majority community wanting elections and I'm supposed to say no?

  He also stated, We're not going to pick winners. Neither the embassy nor the CIA was to assist. Let the chips fall where they may.

  That was a hard order to follow for both the diplomats, who were used to giving support to candidates close to the United States, and the CIA, which favored interim Prime Minister Allawi. However, Tony Blair had sent two British operatives to assist Allawi. He told Bush the British would take care of it.

  The elections were yet another matter on which the top military man, JCS Chairman General Myers, did not get a vote. Neither did anyone else for that matter. Myers could feel that when any doubt started to creep into the small, windowless Situation Room, the president almost stomped it out. Whether it was alarming casualties, bad news, the current decision on the timing of Iraqi elections, some other problem or just a whiff of one of the uncertainties that accompany war, the president would try to set them all straight.

  Hold it, Bush said once. We know we're doing the right thing. We're on the right track here. We're doing the right thing for ourselves, for our own interest and for the world. And don't forget it. Come on, guys.

  Bush harbored deeper, even grandiose ambitions. The morning of Friday, December 3, 2004, he called in his chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson. Bush's goal now was to dramatically alter the American foreign policy mind-set as radically as it had been changed at the beginning of the Cold War in the late 1940s with policies of containment and deterrence. Bush's speech at West Point in June 2002 had laid the groundwork and justification for the invasion of Iraq. Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who despised Bush, marveled that he could change American foreign policy so significantly into a doctrine of what amounted to preventive war —a war to stop a war. To do this without igniting a national debate shows remarkable leadership skills, Schlesinger said.

  When Gerson arrived that Friday morning, the president said he wanted his upcoming second inaugural address to set one idea in stone: The future of America and the security of America depends on the spread of liberty. That was it. He wanted a liberty-and-freedom inaugural address. He wanted Gerson to find the most memorable and economical way possible to state this for all time, words that would define his policy as it related to the new world they were facing. The terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq and the international jihadists had chosen to fight in Iraq for good reason, Bush said. They knew that an American failure in Iraq would have far-reaching consequences in the Middle East.

  They understand the stakes, Bush said, and we should too.

  Rarely did a speechwriter have such an opportunity to define an age. It was a chance to break down further the traditional barriers between realism and idealism in American foreign policy. The realistic interests of America would now be served by fidelity to American ideals, especially democracy. As usual, Gerson had read lots of old speeches, especially the inaugurals in which Harry Truman had defined the doctrines of the Cold War and John Kennedy had amplified them.

  But Kennedy's rhetoric had gone over the top and been too grand, in Gerson's estimation. Pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty, he had said in his 1961 inaugural. That was the mindset that had led to Vietnam. Gerson did not want something that suggested some wild-eyed, open-ended commitment to full democracy everywhere. The fall of Hosni Mubarak's undemocratic but friendly government in Egypt, for example, would hardly be in the immediate interests of the United States.

  Gerson wanted the speech to define realistic elements of democratic reform—not just elections, but the development of democratic cultures in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. This would include the rights of women and minorities, religious liberty, more trade and legal reform.

  We are going to define a serious range of policy options that lie between indifference to the fate of others and constant war, Gerson told a colleague. For example, on Iran, there was an option somewhere between the extremes of an outright invasion and doing nothing. Gerson hoped he could come up with the blueprint for a long-term strategy that would be not destabilizing and confrontational but firm and moral.

  The speech could thematically bring together everything Bush had done since 9/11. For Bush, 9/11 was the demarcation line between the new century and the 1990s, when Clinton had failed to respond aggressively enough to a series of attacks. The 9/11 attacks were a warning about the kind of strategic circumstance that every president would be facing for the next 50 years.

  Hadley had a number of polls of Iraqis that supposedly indicated a significant turn in public opinion in recent months. The surveys showed deep resentment of the American occupation but did not show a distrust of democratic institutions. So trumpeting democracy in the state of the union might appeal to Iraqis.

  Gerson was very aware that Bush's foreign policy was not the type espoused by traditional conservatives, who, as William F. Buckley wrote, stand athwart history yelling, 'Stop!' Bush was clearly saying Go, and Gerson believed that Bush was operating more in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt by using government to expand freedom.

  Gerson was exuberant, hoping for something equivalent in foreign policy to Einstein's unified field theory of the universe. He was so pumped up that he had a heart attack in mid-December. The doctors told him it wasn't overwork. It was a combination of his genes and stress.

  Bush called Gerson at the Alexandria hospital where he was registered under the pseudonym John Alexandria.

  I'm not calling to check on the inaugural, Bush said. I'm calling to check on the guy who's writing the inaugural.

  Gerson recovered. In a few weeks he was back at work on a reduced schedule, focusing on the speech.

  Armitage traveled to Iraq at the end of 2004.

  What did you find? the president asked him upon his return.

  We're not winning, Armitage said, and added carefully, We're not losing. Not winning over a long period of time works for the insurgents. He said that the campaign of intimidation being conducted by the insurgents was unbelievable.

  Bush didn't argue. Afterward Armitage called both Negroponte and Casey to tell them what he had told the president because he didn't want them to be surprised. What was surprising was that neither argued with him. It was a terrible mess. He also found that the CIA and DIA analyses were in agreement. The enemy is by and large homegrown. The external forces, Syria and Iran, are important but not critical to the insurgency.

  Hadley listened to Armitage's formulation of we're not winning, we're not losing, and felt that it was an execution and implementation issue. They were just not doing it right.

  After the violent attacks on Iraqi police stations, Frank Miller once again expressed concern about the way the U.S. military was training police. Various estimates put the number trained at 60,000, but it was hard to know what the number represented. Another estimate said only half of that were really present for duty. In any event, they weren't going to be able to defeat the insurgency with police. This was a war. They needed to focus more on elite combat and paramilitary power.

  There's something wrong with the picture here, he told Rice. We're building beat patrolmen. Excuse the fact that they're
going to work for Saddam-era colonels. There is no station house in the world, I don't care if it's in Los Angeles or New York, that's going to withstand attack from RPGs and heavy machine guns.

  Miller had argued unsuccessfully at the deputies committee meetings that the U.S. embassy in Iraq needed to have outposts all around the country. That was one of the few bright spots during the Bremer era, he thought, that they had 18 regional administrators who actually were plugged in to what was going on in the country. But his idea went nowhere. The U.S embassy footprint was basically limited to the Green Zone.

  There were simple fixes that Miller thought the embassy in Baghdad should be pushing. Insurgent attacks were shutting down the Iraqi oil pipelines, for one. Miller ordered a study that showed nearly all the attacks were directed at small, vulnerable sections of the pipelines. He suggested the military bury these sections with sand and dirt. But they wouldn't do it. He also failed in an effort to get the military to raise its goal for the availability of electricity.

  How do I make the embassy in Baghdad follow the government's orders? Rice asked Miller in December 2004. After six months, Negroponte wanted to come home, and they had to decide who would replace him. Rice and Miller started to talk about Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born American who had been the NSC's point man for the Iraqi opposition and had moved on to become ambassador to Afghanistan. Zal has turned the embassy in Kabul into an embassy on a wartime footing, Rice said. He gets things done.

  It was the kind of Washington gossip that would not stay secret for long, and in early January, an item from Al Kamen's In the Loop column in The Washington Post said that Khalilzad would be taking Negroponte's place.

  Soon, however, there was a snag. Sensitive intelligence revealed discussions in which Khalilzad told the U.N.'s Lakhdar Brahimi not to worry about the January 30 date for the Iraqi elections because it could be slipped. It was remarkable that one of Bush's ambassadors would tell a foreign official he didn't have to worry about official U.S. policy.

  Armitage called Miller. You've got to see this thing, he said.

  Miller went down to the White House Situation Room and asked to see the cables, but they weren't there. He called Armitage back.

  Rich, I can't find it. The SitRoom can't find it.

  Yeah, I know, Armitage said. They've all been impounded.

  That's it, Miller thought.

  Zal, you really blew it, Hadley told Khalilzad in a phone call. I doubt the president will ever be able to nominate you as ambassador to Iraq, and certainly not now. At minimum a decent interval of several months will have to pass before he can. But maybe never.

  Bush hosted a White House reception on January 3, 2005, for newly elected members of Congress and their spouses. Laura and I know how hard it is on a family to be in the political arena, he said. It's the ultimate sacrifice, really—sacrifice your privacy, sacrifice time with your kids.

  It was inappropriate in the extreme given that 1,333 Americans and thousands more Iraqis had made the true ultimate sacrifice. Bush was in a post-election bubble.

  Bush made only a passing reference to Iraq. We've got to make sure that we win the war. We've got to make sure we support our troops.

  Two days later, at an NSC meeting, there was a long discussion about how the Sunni participation would be increased in the upcoming election.

  Let's be clever about exploring creative ideas about how we can permit Sunnis to participate notwithstanding the violence, the president said. How about voting by telephone? How about mailing in ballots? How about getting ambassadors to go to Arab countries and encourage Arab countries to get in touch with Sunnis and encourage the Sunnis to participate in the process?

  As Jeffrey watched Bush from Baghdad on the secure video, he was astonished. Rarely were diplomats or military in the field given such direct, clear guidance from a commander in chief: You will make it happen. Bush's ideas about voting by mail and phone were impractical, but there was something about Bush's enthusiasm and belief. Bush was saying, in effect, You really don't have a choice in this one. This is one you can't screw up. As the elections approached, Jeffrey felt a mixture of dread and hope.

  At the White House, Hadley watched in some wonder as the CIA came in regularly to brief the president with dire forecasts of civil war.

  The elections would not reduce violence and would likely make things worse, the CIA said.

  We're going to hold the election on January 30, Bush replied. Deadlines were critical to progress. No deadline, no progress, and nothing would happen.

  The CIA—both orally and in classified written reports—repeated its message. The January 30 date was like pinning a target on all of Iraq— strike that day, hit the polling places. Because the minority Sunnis knew this was an election they were going to lose, it would trigger sectarian violence by both Sunnis and Shiites. The agency again recommended delaying the election.

  Hadley went head-to-head with CIA Director Porter Goss and some of his analysts and operatives. He wanted them to be engaged in propaganda operations to support the election. But the CIA's idea of information operations, he thought, was to spread lies.

  Why spread lies? Hadley asked. Spread the truth. It's much more powerful. You don't get it. You need to find ways to get out the truth in a way it won't be instantly discredited because it's from us.

  America had the loudest voice in the world with its movies, music and television. But, Hadley lamented, every day America was beat on message by the terrorists and Al Jazeera.

  At an NSC meeting January 10, 2005, Bush reaffirmed that they would stick to the Iraqi election date 20 days away. We need to think about the post-election strategy, he said. Success hinged in part on whether the minority Sunnis would see themselves as part of the new government. We will need to influence the Shia victors so they will make clear to all that the Sunnis will be included. What matters is not as much the vote, but what the government will look like that comes out of the vote.

  But which Sunnis? Who had power among that minority? The U.S. invasion had ousted the Sunnis, so how could the U.S. be seen as the honest broker, let alone as outsiders looking out for Sunni interests? Those questions were not addressed and thus were unanswered.

  Hadley was getting cold feet. Maybe they should delay.

  We're sticking with the elections, Bush repeated. In private he railed at the lack of forceful leadership in Iraq. Where were the leaders? Why wouldn't they step forward. Why don't they take charge of their own destiny?

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  on january 18, Rice appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for her confirmation hearings. Democrats came out swinging. Your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell this war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth, accused Senator Barbara Boxer of California, before launching into a litany of Rice's pronouncements about WMD before the invasion.

  Rice was clearly taken aback as she responded. Senator, I have to say that I have never, ever lost respect for the truth in the service of anything, she said. But back at the White House she was clearly down.

  Buck up, Rove said. Republicans controlled the Senate, so her confirmation might be bruising but it would be a formality. It was a cost of doing business in Washington in politics. Winners suffered wounds, but they could survive and even thrive. You're going to be fine. You're winning.

  A week later the Senate voted 85-13 to confirm her.

  By inauguration day, January 20, Bush had practiced his address many times. I can't wait to give this speech, he told Gerson. Though others had some input, it was a speech, and policy, essentially worked out by Bush and his speech writer. After reading a final draft, Andy Card half joked, This is not a speech Dick Cheney would give.

  After Bush took the oath of office on the Capitol steps, he stepped to the podium and delivered his 2,000-word, 17-minute address. In terms of delivery, it was one of his best performances. He spoke crisply, with neither a stumble, nor a moment of drift nor hesitation.

  It is the policy of the
United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world, Bush declared. He used the words freedom or liberty —or variations such as free or liberating —44 times, nine of them in the last two paragraphs.

  Gerson usually watched Bush's speeches on television, so he would see them like the average person and be better able to understand reactions. But this time he was on the inaugural platform. He had never had a more palpable sense that they were involved in an important historic enterprise. Every future president, in Gerson's view, would have to take the Bush Doctrine seriously. It would point a way through the coming decades.

  Something big has happened, reported Hadley after getting some international reactions.

  For many conservatives, the speech was a big negative. Peggy Noonan, Bush senior's speechwriter, blasted the speech in The Wall Street Journal, sticking her finger in the eye of its central principle. It left me with a bad feeling, Noonan wrote. It carried a punch, asserting an agenda so sweeping that an observer quipped that by the end he would not have been surprised if the president had announced we were going to colonize Mars.

  It seemed a document produced by a White House on a mission. The United States, the speech said, has put the world on notice. She said the ambition of ending tyranny was laudable, but This is—how else to put it?—over the top, adding, The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible.

  When informed of the reaction of his father's favorite speechwriter, Bush was dismissive.

  Rice thought the speech was soaring, one of the best she had ever heard. But as she sat there listening, she thought, All right. Now how do we execute it? She realized it would take years. The question, she told her staff, was: If people look back 30 years from now and they read President Bush's second inaugural, will they say that American policy helped to deliver on that, or deliver the foundations for achieving that? As for the criticism, she said, If the president of the United States can't stand up and say we should look to the day when we end tyranny and that all live in liberty, where else are you going to say it but in an inaugural? That's the time to have a kind of daring dream.