Bob Woodward

by State of Denial (lit)

  As his inauguration approached, Maliki said he was going to be able to invite only about 10 percent of the parliament because there was no air-conditioning in the big hall. Will you look at it? he asked Wilkinson. Soon new air-conditioning systems were being flown in from all over the Middle East, and the U.S. embassy and military got the big hall air-conditioned.

  Maliki did not want a showy or elaborate inaugural. How can I do that when Iraqis are dying? he asked.

  Wilkinson found that Maliki kept saying all the right things, almost sounded like the U.S. ambassador. An embassy staffer asked Wilkinson for an overall appraisal.

  He's either full of shit, or he's the real thing, Wilkinson replied. From what he could tell it looked like Maliki had a group of about seven people who were making all the personnel and other critical decisions. He realized he had found a way to enter Maliki's system on the management side but he had not found one on the policy side. Maliki was keeping his cards close to his chest. One of the key British advisers asked Maliki if he would like help writing his inaugural address.

  Maliki answered with an Arabic version of Whoa! It was clear there were boundaries he didn't want crossed. Whenever Wilkinson asked something about policy he could see Maliki's polite but impenetrable glass shield go up.

  as wilkinson talked to U.S. military officers at high and low levels, he saw the contradiction. The forces were getting two messages. Bush and Rice were saying, Iraq is the most important thing, central to the war on terror, essential to the stability of the Middle East and the future of civilization. At the same time, the internal pressure in the military was, we've got to get out as quickly as possible.

  In the end Wilkinson concluded this was the last chance. If Maliki couldn't show his people why democracy was better, get his government to deliver services and more security, it wasn't going to work.

  I'm not sure what Plan B is, Wilkinson often said.

  At times he wondered if George W. Bush's democracy agenda would really work. Did this high rhetoric resonate or not? Had so much of the actual or potential goodwill of the Iraqis been destroyed that they would cease to believe democracy would work for them? The Americans with their ideas and military and promises had once put a man on the moon but they couldn't get the damn electricity to work? He wondered if Maliki was going to be judged by American mistakes, and, in turn, would America be judged by his? And what would break the back of militant Islamic fundamentalism?

  And was Bush getting good information? Bush had been told too many times, for example, that the electricity was up or about to be up. It wasn't. For a long time Wilkinson thought the center of gravity was electricity because that was something Rice and the State Department could influence.

  But the real issue was security. He watched Baghdad ER, the highly graphic, even grisly HBO one-hour documentary about the same combat support hospital in Baghdad that Rice and he had visited the previous year. The documentary was a gripping, gory depiction of the horrors of war visited on those shredded, maimed and killed by IEDs, bullets and mortars. The central character is the soldier's body. Up-close shots inside the ER show legs and arms that had been blown off or must be amputated. Soldiers arrive with bloodied, shrapnel-shredded faces and shrapnel embedded in everything from limbs and chests to an eye. Many of the survivors are medically evacuated to hospitals in Germany or to Walter Reed. The many who die are shown being placed or encased in the black body bags. Blood is endlessly mopped up from the operating room floors.

  I hate this stupid war, one of the hospital staff says. I think it's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. I don't think it's more intelligent than any other war that's ever been fought.

  Wilkinson was shaken after he watched it. His brother was an enlisted soldier in Iraq.

  Is it worth his life? Wilkinson was asking himself.

  The whole Iraq situation was really tragic. He could see it was even getting to Rice, who at times seemed demoralized.

  Rice had once told him, I don't like extremists.

  Why not?

  Because on some of these issues I don't trust anybody that's that sure, the secretary of state had said.

  Rice's Iraq policy coordinator, Jim Jeffrey, had heard the refrain that Maliki was the last chance for Iraq. He thought it was bunk. The idea of a last chance for Iraq was simply unthinkable. Attacks were up, but there had been some success in putting together a government. They were making progress, he thought.

  Jeffrey simply couldn't imagine a scenario like in Vietnam in 1975 or Somalia in 1993. There, he thought, the U.S. simply decided it was too hard and not worth it.

  If we leave, he thought, Iraq will do one of two things. Either it will descend into complete chaos or it will become a nation dedicated to hatred of the so-called Great Satan, meaning the United States.

  Besides, the country was sitting on between a third and a half of the Middle East's oil reserves, depending on which experts you listened to. Iraq was now hugely important. Bush recognized his presidency hinged on success there. Therefore, Jeffrey concluded, the U.S. wasn't leaving. If Maliki didn't work, they'd find a Plan B. Or a Plan C, or D, or whatever it took.

  The president invited ten former secretaries of state and defense to the Roosevelt Room on Friday, May 12, so he could hear their views on Iraq. Five months earlier, in January, he had held a similar session with essentially the same group, but he had devoted little time to them and been very defensive.

  Powell was given a seat next to Rice, who was on the president's left. Powell had followed the press accounts of the designated new Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. Suddenly everyone, including Bush and Rice, was embracing him. Who is he? Powell asked himself. This new man was allegedly a more effective leader than Jafari. Why? Having served four years in the Bush administration, he knew there was another important question to ask himself: Is that true? What do we know about him? Doing a little reading, research and tapping into his own contacts still in the U.S. government, he was surprised to find that no one from the U.S., including Rice, had previously met him.

  What executive skills does he bring that gets this vote of confidence? Powell asked himself. Maliki was saying all these things that were so pleasing to everybody. He was pledging to bring the militias under control, reconstruct pipelines, and take care of water.

  Bush's main teaching point was Maliki's centrality.

  Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen shifted the focus to Iran. Albright also said that the president ought to talk with Prime Minister Badawi of Malaysia.

  Powell had met with Badawi the week before. He raised his hand and was recognized by Bush.

  But while I have the floor, Powell continued, I'd like to offer you caution about Mr. Maliki, because frankly I don't think any of us heard anything about him or knew anything about him until he was announced last week. And we pushed Jafari aside, but he is a deputy of Jafari's out of the Dawa party. And I have to have a little bit of caution about somebody who spent most of the last 20-odd years in Iran and Syria.

  The significant difference between the January meeting we had with you and this meeting is that in January we had a raging insurgency and terrorism. I think things have gotten worse. We have a raging insurgency still. We still have terrorism. But the new element which came out from the bombing of the religious site at Samarra is that we now have sect-on-sect violence and it's serious. And this is a new war. And it's a war that American troops have less and less to do with. I understand that the [CIA] chiefs of station have a somewhat more negative view.

  Powell could not resist. He had the president's attention in a way that he rarely had when he was secretary of state. He intentionally did not want to contaminate the discussion by saying Iraq was in a civil war, but he wanted to underscore what he thought was the real danger. Your strategy is correct in terms of building up the military and police forces and the government, Powell said, because if you don't have a government that you can connect these force
s to, then Mr. President, you're not building up forces, you're building up militias.

  Bush nodded to Powell.

  Cohen and Albright returned to Iran.

  Mr. President, Powell said, asking for the floor again, I join in what Bill and Madeleine and others have said about Iran, but the main event is Iraq and Iraq. Iraq. This is the one that will determine everything. What we do with Iran, that's important, but you've got to look at the wolf that's eating you.

  Afterward, Hadley came up to Powell and said he wanted to call to follow up. Josh Bolten, the new chief of staff, said the same thing. Let's have dinner, Rice said to Powell. They set it up, but she had to cancel. She had been unexpectedly dispatched to Europe to meet with leaders there on nuclear negotiations with Iran.

  Maliki took office in a formal ceremony on Saturday, May 20. In a high-security hall inside the protected Green Zone he laid out a 33-point program. The three major challenges, he said, were terrorism, corruption and providing services to the people.

  In a speech in Chicago two days later, Monday, May 22, Bush said that progress in Iraq had been incremental and had included some setbacks. Yet we have now reached a turning point in the struggle between freedom and terror, he said, pouring on the optimism. Iraqis have, he said, demonstrated that democracy is the hope of the Middle East and the destiny of all mankind.

  Bush normally avoided predictions about history and its judgments, but this day he closed by saying, Years from now, people will look back on the formation of a unity government in Iraq as a decisive moment in the story of liberty, a moment when freedom gained a firm foothold in the Middle East and the forces of terror began their long retreat.

  That week Rumsfeld was holding three days of closed-door Pentagon meetings with the combatant commanders and top civilians in Defense. Before Rumsfeld, these regular meetings had been run by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Rumsfeld now ran the meetings.

  General Jones, the NATO commander, told Pace he believed that Rumsfeld so controlled everything, even at the earliest stages, that they were not generating independent military advice as they had a legal obligation to do. Rumsfeld was driving and affecting the debates and decisions politically. They, the uniformed military, should be worried about the political spin, he said. He proposed that Pace meet alone with the combatant commanders and service chiefs—without Rumsfeld, without any Defense Department civilians. I've got issues, he said, that needed to be addressed and debated without Rumsfeld present.

  Pace agreed to hold a one-hour meeting one morning that week with just the service chiefs and combatant commanders.

  At the meeting, Jones said he wanted to focus on one issue—the value of forward basing. The Marines, Army, Navy and Air Force had bases all over the world so they would be at trouble spots to prevent conflict, secure borders, capture or defeat terrorists. Rumsfeld's idea was to bring as many of the forces as he could back to the United States. Jones argued that this was altering the basic concept and premise of American global presence. They had an obligation to state their views and fight this new theology because it would weaken the position of the United States in the world. A number of those present agreed in principle, but no one seemed willing to take on the secretary of defense.

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  the next day, Wednesday, May 24, the intelligence division of the Joint Staff, the J-2, circulated an intelligence assessment, classified SECRET, that showed that the forces of terror in Iraq were not in retreat. It was a stunning refutation of the president's forecasts, most recently just two days earlier in Chicago. The report was sent to the White House, the State Department and other intelligence agencies.

  It put hard numbers on trends that had been reported to Bush all year. Terrorist attacks had been steadily increasing. The insurgency was gaining.

  In large print, the assessment said, 'ATTACKS IN MAY WILL LIKELY SURPASS APRIL LEVELS, WHICH WERE THE HIGHEST EVER RECORDED. THE SUNNI ARAB INSURGENCY IS GAINING STRENGTH AND INCREASING CAPACITY DESPITE POLITICAL PROGRESS AND IRAQI SECURITY FORCES DEVELOPMENT.

  Next to this statement was a bar graph showing the average number of daily attacks in the first five months of the year. It showed a steady increase:

  That meant the attacks were now averaging 600 to 700 a week. Every IED that was discovered—whether it detonated and caused damage or casualties or was identified and disarmed before it could do any damage—was still counted as an attack.

  A graph measuring attacks from May 2003 to May 2006 showed some significant dips, but the current number of attacks was as high as they had ever been—exceeding 3,500 a month.

  The assessment also said, INSURGENTS AND TERRORISTS RETAIN THE RESOURCES AND CAPABILITIES TO SUSTAIN AND EVEN INCREASE CURRENT LEVEL OF VIOLENCE THROUGH THE NEXT YEAR.

  The picture could hardly have been bleaker. Though the United States had about 130,000 troops—about 80 percent of the height of 160,000— the Iraqis had steadily added security forces and now had some 263,000 military and police. Maybe half of those were in the lead, running security operations throughout Iraq, although even they each had U.S. military advisers working with them.

  The SECRET assessment had a pessimistic report on crude oil production. The Iraqi government had set 2.5 million barrels a day as the

  target for June 2006. It was a high goal and probably unrealistic. It was averaging 2.1 million a day.

  The SECRET report said: ASSESSMENT: CONTINUING SECURITY AND SABOTAGE DIVERT RECONSTRUCTION FUNDS TO TRIAGE REPAIRS AND FUEL IMPORTS. PRODUCTION UNLIKELY TO MEET 2006 MINISTRY OF OIL TARGETS WITHOUT INFRASTRUCTURE REHABILITATION, ENHANCED SECURITY AND EXPANDED FOREIGN INVESTMENT.

  On electricity: ASSESSMENT: DESPITE ADDED CAPACITY THERE HAS BEEN LITTLE NET GAIN IN GENERATION SINCE PRE-OIF [OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM]. BEYOND IMPROVED SECURITY, IRAQ NEEDS A STRATEGIC APPROACH TO SECTOR REHABILITATION, DEVELOPING LARGE SCALE PLANTS IN CENTRAL SOUTH THAT UTILIZE DOMESTIC FUELS.

  On the political front the news was not much better. The fight for control of the ministries between the Shiites and Sunnis was critical.

  MINISTERS WILL BE POLITICALLY LOYAL TO THEIR RESPECTIVE PARTIES AND SOME MINISTRIES ARE LIKELY TO BECOME HAVENS FOR THE POLITICAL PARTIES WHO CONTROL THEM, the report said.

  THREATS OF SHIA ASCENDANCY COULD HARDEN AND EXPAND

  SHIA MILITANT OPPOSITION AND INCREASE CALLS FOR COALITION WITHDRAWAL.

  Another section said, SHIA MILITIA INTEGRATION MAY ALIENATE SUNNI ARABS, MANY OF WHOM VIEW SHIA GROUPS AS COMPLICIT IN EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLINGS.

  Other intelligence added to the bleak picture. Advanced IEDs called explosively formed penetrators (EFPs)—explosives shaped to penetrate Humvees, personnel carriers and even tanks, that then explode further inside—were being found in Iraq. Though they had first turned up about a year before, in the middle of 2005, by the spring of 2006 about 15 were being detonated or disarmed a month, perhaps up to 40 one month by one account. They were not that high-tech but were of sufficient sophistication that they couldn't have been homemade. The high-quality machining and the higher-quality triggering devices had been traced to Iran. Some were triggered by passive infrared devices that could overcome U.S. countermeasures. The EFPs were about four times as lethal as the conventional IEDs. In one study, one person was killed for every two conventional IEDs, but each advanced EFP killed an average of 2.2 people. There was at least one example of an EFP penetrating the heavy armor of a large Abrams tank.

  The radical Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps had asked Hezbollah, the terrorist organization, to conduct some of the training of Iraqis to use the EFPs, according to U.S. intelligence.

  If all this were put out publicly, it might start a fire that no one could put out. First, questions would immediately arise about the quality of the intelligence. Was this potentially another WMD fiasco? Second, if it were true, it meant that the Iranians were killing American soldiers—an act of war. The chief premise of a Republican foreign policy had been toughness—no more weakness, no more Carters or Clintons and their
pathological unwillingness to use force. Where would that lead them in dealing with Iran now?

  There was a third problem. The EFPs were being fed into the Shiite groups in the south and some in Baghdad, but comparatively speaking, the level of EFPs was not all that high. Suppose the Iranians put their minds and energies to it and started giving the technology, know-how and equipment in large numbers to the Sunni Arab insurgency, as well as the Shiites? That would be an entirely different matter.

  Polling showed that about 50 percent of the Sunnis had a positive attitude toward the insurgency. Since Sunnis were about 20 percent of the overall population, that meant at least 10 percent of Iraqis—over 2 million people—had a favorable attitude toward the insurgents.

  In July 2006, I told Rumsfeld that I understood the number of attacks was going up.

  That's probably true, he said. It is also probably true that our data's better, and we're categorizing more things as attacks. A random round can be an attack and all the way up to killing 50 people someplace. So you've got a whole fruit bowl of different things—a banana and an apple and an orange.

  I was speechless. Even with the loosest and most careless use of language and analogy, I did not understand how the secretary of defense would compare insurgent attacks to a fruit bowl, a metaphor that stripped them of all urgency and emotion. The official categories in the classified reports that Rumsfeld regularly received were the lethal IEDs, standoff attacks with mortars, and close engagements such as ambushes—as far from bananas, apples and oranges as possible.

  The attacks are up, JCS Chairman General Pace confirmed, because folks want that place to be ungovernable so that when it is ungovernable we would walk away so they could then take over. He then got wound up, adding, So you can expect the attacks to stay up because every day that Prime Minister Maliki and his parliament meet and make decisions is a bad day for those who are creating those attacks. ... They're on the ropes ... if this parliament continues to function and this prime minister continues to function.