Bob Woodward

by State of Denial (lit)

  Clark said that Pace should reassert his legal responsibility as chairman. You should have something to say about it when the guy sitting one deck up refuses to forward your assessment to the Congress for 13 months. This is fundamentally not just a breakdown in the system. That is a breach of faith.

  Pace said thank you, and Clark left.

  Later Pace said that he recalled the meeting and Clark's question— When you leave, what do you want them to say about your time here?

  That was a great question to ask, Pace said. It sounded about right, he said, that Rumsfeld sat on the Chairman's Program Assessment for 13 months. Not to my knowledge, he said, did Clark say the delay was a breach of faith. The conversation I had with Vern Clark was very relaxed, no angst, no anger.

  By the summer of 2005, Dan Bartlett was exerting more and more pressure; it was constant, within the White House and on the president, about the need to change their communications strategy on Iraq. The language of resolve was no longer working. They were losing more and more credibility and the only way to regain some of it was to acknowledge that there had been mistakes along the way. There was power in acknowledging mistakes. It would convince people they were willing to adjust and alter their policy by first admitting that some things had to be changed. This was consistent with the goal of communicating that the president had a flexible strategy.

  The other point Bartlett made to the president was the need to show that he was listening to critics. Where their intentions were good, he recommended, the president should say so. The resolve and determination were coming off as pigheaded.

  All of this flew in the face of Bush's natural tendencies. His primary message to Americans and Iraqis had to be that he would not be shaken. The Sunnis, in particular, were playing both sides. American steadiness would help encourage them to participate, the president believed. Any American steps back would feed the Sunni insurgency, and make them optimistic for a post-American future in which there might be an ultimate sectarian war, from which they could wrest control of the country again.

  Bush did not outright disagree with Bartlett that some message adjustments would have to be made. But it would take time to wean the president from his zero-defect proclamations.

  Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had a powerful, largely invisible influence on the foreign policy of the Bush administration.

  Of the outside people that I talk to in this job, Vice President Cheney told me in the summer of 2005, I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than I talk to anybody else. He just comes by and I guess at least once a month, Scooter and I sit down with him.

  Cheney had worked closely with Kissinger in the Ford administration, when Cheney was deputy and later chief of staff. Kissinger at first had been both secretary of state and national security adviser, an arrangement that every subsequent secretary of state had envied. Kissinger's ego was monumental, but Cheney found his hard-line advice useful after 9/11. They shared a worldview that international relations were a matter of military and economic power. Diplomatic power derived from threatening to and then actually using that power. In its rawest form, using the military sent a useful message to the world: It's dangerous to be an enemy of the United States.

  The president also met privately with Kissinger every couple of months, making the former secretary the most regular and frequent outside adviser to Bush on foreign affairs. Bush, according to Cheney, was a big fan of Kissinger. Of the Bush-Kissinger meetings, Rumsfeld said, I helped set it up. The president, who generally discounts the importance of outside advisers, found his discussions with Kissinger important, according to Cheney, Rumsfeld and others in the White House.

  Card and the president's personal office staff knew that Kissinger was one of the few nonfamily outsiders with a standing invitation to call whenever he was coming to Washington to see if the president was available. By Card's calculation about half the meetings were just the president and Kissinger. Either he or Rice attended the other half.

  No one in the American foreign policy establishment was more controversial or carried more baggage than Kissinger, then 82 years old.

  Vietnam was like a stone around his neck and the prism through which he saw the world. After Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Robert McNamara, probably nobody else was so associated with that war. He had been the architect with Nixon, and later Ford, of U.S. foreign policy from 1969 to 1975. In his writing, speeches and private comments, Kissinger claimed that the United States had essentially won the war in 1972, only to lose it because of weakened resolve by the public and Congress.

  If Kissinger felt he had something to say, he generally wrote about it, often in opinion pieces in The Washington Post. He had lots of thoughts about Iraq and Bush. He supported the war. Though he had little problem with Bush's second inaugural urging the spread of democracy and the end of tyranny, Kissinger would have been more modest in applying it. We cannot abandon national security in pursuit of virtue, he had written in his 1999 book, Years of Renewal, on the Ford presidency. The United States must temper its missionary spirit with a concept of national interest and rely on its head as well as its heart in defining its duty to the world.

  In a practical sense, Kissinger was not at all certain that Iraq was ready for democracy, and he had reservations about using American combat troops in a massive effort to train a foreign military. In addition, since most Iraqis identified first and foremost with their tribal or religious sectarian background—Sunni, Shiite or Kurd—the question was how to encourage the development of a national Iraqi identity. Closely related was the crucial question of who the Iraqi army would fight for.

  Kissinger liked Bush personally, though he told colleagues that it was not clear to him that the president really knew how to run the government. One of the big problems, he felt, was that Bush did not have the people or a system of national security policy decision making that ensured careful examination of the downsides of major decisions.

  Kissinger sensed wobbliness everywhere on Iraq, and he increasingly saw it through his Vietnam prism. For Kissinger, the overriding lesson of Vietnam is to stick it out.

  His column in the Post on August 12, 2005, was entitled Lessons for an Exit Strategy. It was almost as long as Bush's second inaugural address. In the key line, Kissinger wrote, Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy. He then made the rounds at the White House with Bush, Cheney and Hadley. Victory had to be the goal, he told all. Don't let it happen again. Don't give an inch, or else the media, the Congress and the American culture of avoiding hardship will walk you back. He also said that the eventual outcome in Iraq was more important than Vietnam had been. A radical Islamic or Taliban-style government in Iraq would be a model that could challenge the internal stability of the key countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

  Kissinger told Rice that in Vietnam they didn't have the time, focus, energy or support at home to get the politics in place. That's why it had collapsed like a house of cards. He urged that the Bush administration get the politics right, both in Iraq and on the home front. Partially withdrawing troops had its own dangers. Even entertaining the idea of withdrawing any troops could create momentum for an exit that was less than victory.

  Rice understood that Kissinger's message reinforced a conviction that the president already held.

  In early September 2005, Mike Gerson went to see Kissinger in New York City.

  Why did you support the Iraq War? Gerson asked him.

  Because Afghanistan wasn't enough, Kissinger answered. In the conflict with radical Islam, he said, they want to humiliate us. And we need to humiliate them. The American response to 9/11 had essentially to be more than proportionate—on a larger scale than simply invading Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban. Something else was needed. The Iraq War was essential to send a larger message, in order to make a point that we're not going to live in this world that they want for us. He said he had defended the war ever since. In Manhattan, this position got him in
trouble, particularly at cocktail parties, he noted with a smile.

  Gerson understood that Kissinger viewed Iraq purely in the context of power politics. It was not idealism. He didn't seem to connect with Bush's goal of promoting democracy. What did you think of the second inaugural? Gerson asked him.

  At first I was appalled, Kissinger said, carefully covering himself because that was what he had told others, and continued to say in private. On reflection, he claimed, he now believed the speech served a purpose and was a very smart move, setting the war on terror and overall U.S. foreign policy in the context of American values. That would help sustain a long campaign.

  On Iran, Kissinger said it was absolutely critical that Iran not be allowed to gain nuclear capability and nuclear weapons. If it does, he said, all the powers in the region—Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the others—would go nuclear. That would be one of the worst strategic nightmares that America could imagine, he said. That could dwarf the uncertainties of the Cold War.

  Returning to Iraq, Kissinger told Gerson that Bush needed to resist the pressure to withdraw American troops, repeating his axiom that the only meaningful exit strategy was victory. The president can't be talking about troop reductions as a centerpiece, Kissinger said. You may want to reduce troops. But troop reduction should not be the objective. This is not where you put the emphasis.

  He then gave Gerson a copy of his so-called salted peanut memo, written during the first year of the Nixon administration. In the memo to President Nixon, dated September 10, 1969, Kissinger warned, Withdrawal of U.S. troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public; the more U.S. troops come home, the more will be demanded. The policy of Vietnamization, turning the fight over to the South Vietnamese military, Kissinger wrote, might increase pressure to end the war because the American public wanted a quick resolution. Troop withdrawals would only encourage the enemy. It will become harder and harder to maintain the morale of those who remain, not to speak of their mothers.

  For Kissinger, Iraq was the Vietnam sequel. He replayed for Gerson his version of the end of the Vietnam War. The public, the Congress, the Defense Department and the military had all lost their will. At one point, he said, he had proposed to President Nixon a major ultimatum to the North Vietnamese with dire consequences if they did not negotiate peace. But it didn't happen, the former national security adviser said wistfully. I didn't have enough power.

  now in Washington, as the Iraq policy coordinator, Jim Jeffrey told Rice he saw some serious problems with General Casey's Campaign Plan, the classified outline of the goals for the U.S. and other coalition forces in Iraq.

  In short, the massive document said the Multi-National Force-Iraq, which Casey commanded, had two goals: first, to defeat the terrorists, which meant killing Zarqawi and neutralizing the insurgency; and second, to stand up, train and equip the Iraqi armed forces. There were also six other missions called lines of operations. *

  War was no longer just the application of lethal firepower from guns, artillery and bombs. The larger task and the more enduring one was the concerted effort to win the hearts, minds and support of the Iraqi people. That meant not only solving the immense security problem. It meant improving the daily lives of average Iraqis. It meant that it would take much more than physical security to win the war, and the political and economic conditions would be decisive to get to the peace.

  The problem was execution. Zarqawi was still alive and the insurgency was not being neutralized. Casey had been up front about that in classified reports and briefings. They are containing the insurgency, Jeffrey said. That was containing in the sense that the Soviet Union had been contained during the Cold War. The Soviet Union remained a powerful threat, and was never neutralized until it collapsed.

  The Iraq insurgency posed a similar, devastating threat. Attacks have crept up over the last two years, Jeffrey said. Though the American casualty rate was about the same, the Iraqi security forces were being harder hit. They're losing 2 to every 1 of ours, Jeffrey said. And thus the effects of the insurgency are about the same or maybe just a little bit greater. It isn't going to go anywhere.

  It's still capable of tying us in knots on the electricity, Jeffrey said,

  * The lines of operations included: assist Iraqis in governing and developing a democracy; help to provide essential services such as electricity, water, sanitation and schools; help to strengthen the economy; assist in strengthening the rule of law and civil rights; increase international support; and communicate to Iraqis and promote free, independent and responsible Iraqi media.

  killing lots of people, sparking sectarian violence, generally being a pain in the ass. They're not going to overrun the country, but they're not going away and they're not allowing themselves to be neutralized.

  Rice understood that she needed to move more out of her lane and into Rumsfeld's. It was creating noticeable friction with the secretary of defense.

  Rumsfeld pushed back, countering regularly that the lack of progress on the political and economic front, Rice's areas, was impacting negatively on the security. Publicly he insisted that they needed progress on all three fronts.

  The Rice-Rumsfeld conflict was soon focused on the Iraqi economy. The classified National Strategy for Supporting Iraq (NSSI), a massive document of some 500 pages brimming with color-coded charts, outlined how some $21 billion in U.S. aid to Iraq would be spent— refurbishing schools, building massive electrical power plants and reconstructing the oil infrastructure. Most of the State Department money and personnel in the field were directed at this, as was much of the U.S. military effort.

  But it was not going well, and the reasons had to do with the same infrastructure security problems that Frank Miller on Rice's NSC staff and others had identified for her years earlier.

  Bandar had been ill and out of commission for months, even spending some time in a hospital. Now he was going to leave the United States after nearly 22 years as ambassador. The Saudi king was going to create a National Security Council modeled after the U.S. version, and Bandar was going to be secretary general of the council, a post equivalent to the American national security adviser.

  He paid a farewell call on President Bush on September 8, 2005. There was no real discussion of politics or policy. Bandar gave the president a silver medallion engraved with a dove and his initials and those of his wife, Princess Haifa. In a photo with Bush, Bandar looks worn and distant.

  38

  zelikow flew back to Iraq in September 2005 for another inspection tour, nine days this time. He traveled fairly light with six people—a staff assistant, a colonel from General Casey's command, a State Department security officer and three soldiers. He visited four cities and Baghdad twice. When he came back he wrote a 23-page SECRET/NODIS memorandum for Rice dated September 26, 2005.

  He first noted there had been major progress on security over the past year, but the insurgency had adapted. They had improved their tactics and were now using more effective improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Their choice of targets and how they hit them was very troubling, especially considering that they had more lethal weapons now. The disappointing reality was that the insurgents could operate freely in many parts of the country and U.S. forces were spread thin.

  Momentum after the January 30 election had substantially dissipated, Zelikow reported, and the transitional government under Jafari was generally underperforming. One of the most dramatic findings was that the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, which oversaw the police forces, was operating a shadowy system of extrajudicial detentions and killings.

  On the two other pillars for postwar Iraq—economic development and governance, the two that State was responsible for—the report was grim: Not visibly advanced and some areas had moved backwards. In the areas of electricity, oil and water, the U.S. was expending a huge effort just to stay in the same place. Then came the killer line: Iraqis had exaggerated hopes about what we would do in their country and the general failure of public service
s has hurtled [them] into profound disillusionment about America.

  Zelikow asked the ultimate question: Are we on the right track? Success in Iraq is hard to define once you get past the platitudes. What does success mean?

  He laid out some measurable goals or milestones that would mean success:

  First: An insurgency broken and neutralized enough so that an Iraqi government can contain it without large scale US help. In other words, the US would not need a corps-sized commitment of US ground forces beyond, say 2008. That meant no more than 40,000 to 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by the last year of the Bush presidency.

  Second: An independent Iraqi government, able to maintain enough public order so that Iraq is not a significant base for Islamist terrorism against the United States, and is not an open field for violent revolutionary Iranian subversion and interference with world oil supplies.

  Third: An Iraqi government that demonstrates some positive potential for democratic processes in the Arab and Muslim world.

  Fourth: An Iraqi government turning the corner fiscally and economically to the point that there is a sense of economic hope and a visible path towards financial self-sufficiency.

  Zelikow concluded, Failure is a condition where you don't get that by the time the administration leaves office —January 2009. Catastrophic failure could be said to occur if the center doesn't hold and Iraq's experiment at truly national government has collapsed.

  Despite the specifics, Zelikow realized that everyone in Washington would really want him to answer one basic question: How's it going? Answering that was extremely difficult. He was a lawyer, and he felt he was at the point where he could fluently argue the upbeat case, or just as easily and convincingly argue the downbeat case.