On December 19, the day after I was sworn in, I talked with David Petraeus. I wanted to pick the brain of the Army’s most senior expert on counterinsurgency. I also wanted to get better acquainted with the leading candidate to replace George Casey. I asked him what I should look for in Iraq, what questions I should ask. Fundamentally, he said, the question was whether our priority was security for the Iraqi people or transition to Iraqi security forces. We probably couldn’t do the latter until we had improved the former.
A few hours later I departed on my first trip to Iraq as secretary. I was accompanied by Pete Pace and by Eric Edelman, the undersecretary of defense for policy. Going to Iraq as secretary of defense was quite different than going as a member of a study group. For security purposes, I flew in a military cargo plane, but inside the vast hold was a sort of large silver Airstream trailer—a capsule nicknamed the “Silver Bullet”—for me and a handful of others. I had a small cabin to myself with a desk and a sofa that folded out into a bed. The bathroom was so small you could not use it with the door closed. There was a middle section with a desk and seat for a staff member, and a small refrigerator, and another section where two or three additional people could sit. It was tight quarters for a twelve-hour flight but significantly better than the seats out in the cargo bay, and a lot quieter as well. Still, because there were no windows in the plane, it was a lot like being FedExed halfway around the world.
Upon arrival in Baghdad, I was met by Generals Abizaid and Casey and helicoptered to Camp Victory, a huge complex that included the Al Faw palace, our military headquarters, and the Joint Visitors Bureau (JVB). The JVB guesthouse was another of Saddam’s palaces and was ornately decorated in what I would call “early dictator,” with huge furniture and a lot of gold leaf. My bedroom was roughly the size of a basketball court and featured a huge chandelier. The bathroom was long on ornamentation and short on plumbing. I would stay at the JVB many times, and after the National Guard took over its management, living conditions would improve. Still, the relative plushness made me uneasy because I knew what kind of conditions our troops were enduring. My staff and I had no cause to complain—ever.
I spent a lot of my two and a half days in Iraq with our commanders. It was during this trip that I would first meet several of the Army’s warrior generals I would come to know, respect, and promote in the years to come, including Lieutenant Generals Ray Odierno, Stan McChrystal, and Marty Dempsey.
I had lengthy meetings and meals with all of the senior Iraqi government officials. These conversations were much more productive than what I had experienced when visiting as a member of the Study Group, which was not surprising, given how important I had become to their future.
I began a practice on this first trip that I would continue on all future visits to Iraq and Afghanistan, and also at every military facility and unit I would visit as secretary—I had a meal with troops, usually a dozen or so, either young officers (lieutenants and captains), junior enlisted, or middle-level noncommissioned officers. They were surprisingly candid with me—partly because I would not allow any of their commanders in the room—and I always learned a lot.
As I prepared to fly from Baghdad to Mosul, I gave my first press conference in Iraq, outdoors in front of the JVB. What I said probably had less of an impact on the reporters than the racket made by a firefight going on in the background.
On the flight back to Washington, I prepared to meet with the president the next morning at Camp David. I told him then that I had promised the Senate to listen on this trip to our senior commanders, and I had. Their central theme was still the transitioning of security responsibility to the Iraqis. I said I thought that we were at a “pivot point” in Iraq, that the emerging Iraqi plan being worked on by Casey looked like a turning point in terms of the Iraqis wanting to take leadership on security with strong U.S. support. From extensive discussions with the commanders, I said, it was clear to me that there was broad agreement from Abizaid on down on a “highly targeted, modest increase” of up to two brigades in support of operations in Baghdad, contingent on a commensurate increase in U.S. civilian and economic assistance. The incremental increase would be designed to prolong “holding” operations long enough for the Iraqis to get nine more brigades fully in place in Baghdad and start gaining control of the situation on the ground.
With regard to Anbar province, where the sheikhs had come on board, I reported that our commanders believed they had made significant progress. Abizaid had told me that Marine commander Major General Rick Zilmer was “kicking the crap out of al Qaeda” there. Both Odierno and Zilmer believed that two more Marine battalions in Anbar would allow them to build on their success. However, I said, Casey was not persuaded of the need for an increase in troops in Anbar, and the province seemingly was of no importance to Maliki. Casey’s view was that enduring success required more Iraqi security forces and an Iraqi government presence. He said he would continue to work the issue with Odierno.
Maliki was a major problem, I told the president. In my private conversation with him, he had been “very queasy” about any surge. He had warned me that an influx of U.S. troops seemed counter to Iraqi expectations of reduced troop numbers and would make the coalition forces an even bigger target for terrorists. Both Casey and Odierno thought they could get Maliki to buy in, perhaps agreeing to one additional brigade by January 15 to support Baghdad security operations, with a second brigade moving to Kuwait by February 15 to reconstitute a U.S. reserve force. I suggested to the president that the key to addressing Maliki’s reluctance would be to couple his strong desire to have the Iraqis take the lead with the necessity that they not fail. Our commanders were concerned that the Iraqis, while eager to lead, might not be able to successfully carry out the operation. Odierno, clearly more pessimistic than Casey about potential Iraqi performance, had warned me regarding Casey’s plan, “There is no guarantee of success,” and that it was crucial to follow up clearing operations with a prolonged and effective “hold” period, coupled with an immediate infusion of job-creating economic assistance.
I reiterated that Casey and Abizaid did not want more than these approximately 10,000 additional troops. Parroting their line, I said it would be difficult to resource a more aggressive approach due to stresses and strains on the force—and without imposing it on an Iraqi government clearly reluctant to see a large increase in the footprint of U.S. forces in Iraq; to do so would be to undermine much of what had been accomplished over the past two years.
I believe that a president’s senior advisers always owe him as many options as possible and have an obligation to consider what might be done should a plan fail. So I told President Bush that “prudence obliges us to give you some thoughts on a Plan B, should the Baghdad effort fail to show much success.” I had asked Pete Pace to work with Casey to develop such a plan, which might involve using the existing U.S. forces in Iraq for different purposes, including redirecting some of McChrystal’s special operations toward targeting death squad leaders in Baghdad. A redeployment of U.S. forces already in Iraq, if it proved practical, would have a smaller U.S. footprint and would be more easily acceptable to the Maliki government.
I concluded, “Ultimately, Pete Pace, John Abizaid, George Casey, and I believe we probably have enough U.S. forces and Iraqi capability in place to avoid a catastrophe. The worst case is that we continue to make very little progress. If that was to be the result, then we would need to think about more drastic options to prevent our long-term failure in Iraq.”
As I look back, I am sure the president was deeply disappointed by my report—though he never said so. I was basically echoing what Abizaid and Casey had been telling him for months, though they had grudgingly come around to accepting a modest increase in U.S. forces. The president clearly was headed toward a significant increase in U.S. troops. Though I had put on the table the idea of a bigger surge while in Baghdad in September and mentioned that to Bush in my job interview, when I spoke with the president that Sat
urday I did not mention my recommendation to Baker and Hamilton that we surge 25,000 to 40,000 troops. I had been in the job less than a week, and I was not yet prepared to challenge the commander in the field or other senior generals. That would soon change.
One thing I had to learn, and quickly, was the history that senior officers in the military services had among themselves—their relationships often went back decades or even to their West Point or Annapolis days—which affected their judgments of one another and of one another’s proposals and ideas. I also needed to figure out quickly how to read between the lines in listening to military commanders and their subordinates, particularly to identify code words or “tells” that would let me know whether these men were putting on a show of agreement for me when, in fact, they strongly disagreed. I caught a whiff of disagreement between Casey and Odierno in Baghdad, but as I said, it later became clear that Ray strongly disagreed with his boss about the way forward, especially the surge. I would come to rely heavily for these insider insights on the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, first Pete Pace and then Admiral Mike Mullen, and also my senior military assistants.
My views on how we could change the situation in Iraq for the better were evolving quickly. I knew for sure that whatever people had thought about the decision to go to war in Iraq, at this point we could not fail. A defeat of the U.S. military and an Iraqi descent into a vicious civil war that likely would engage other countries in the region would be disastrous, destabilizing the region and dramatically boosting Iran’s power and prestige. In the months of furious criticism of Bush’s surge that would follow, I never heard the critics address the risk that their preferred approach of a precipitous withdrawal of our troops would, in fact, lead to these very consequences.
I recommended to the president that Lieutenant General David Petraeus replace George Casey, who had been in Iraq for thirty months and whose strategy Bush no longer supported. Everybody I asked, including Casey, thought Petraeus was the right man. Two weeks earlier I had received a ringing endorsement of him from an unlikely source, my predecessor as president of Texas A&M, Ray Bowen. Ray had met him on a visit to Mosul in August 2003 and observed that Petraeus had learned how to gain the confidence of the Iraqi people and that he displayed “superior understanding” of Iraq, its people, and the issues surrounding the U.S. presence. The president clearly had also heard good things about Petraeus—as he had made clear during my job interview in early November—and so he immediately agreed.
We also discussed who should be the next chief of staff of the Army. General Pete Schoomaker had been brought out of retirement to assume the job and was more than ready to re-retire. The president said he did not want Casey, after all his service to the country, to leave with a cloud over his head because of the situation in Iraq. We agreed to ask George to become the chief of staff.
Some senators in the confirmation process to come, above all, John McCain, would not be as generous with Casey as the president had been. Indeed, during my first trip to Iraq as secretary, I received word that McCain wanted urgently to speak with me. The telephonic connection was finally made during a dinner Casey was hosting for me. I took the call in his bedroom in Baghdad and, in a surreal moment, listened to McCain tell me just how strongly he opposed making Casey chief of staff of the Army.
The meeting of the national security team with the president at the ranch near Crawford on December 28 brought nearly all of the issues to a head. The United States would commit up to five additional brigade combat teams, or approximately 21,500 troops, half of them by mid-February and the rest at a rate of about 3,500 each succeeding month. While Abizaid and Casey were still talking about sending two brigades with the others to come later as needed, both Petraeus and Odierno wanted all five committed and sent. I agreed with the new commanders’ recommendation (reversing my earlier support of Casey’s approach), persuaded by the argument that if you sent two brigades, then added others later, it would look like the strategy was failing and therefore reinforcements had to be sent. Better to go all in at the outset. I never kidded myself that I was a military expert at the operational level. On this occasion, as later, when I heard the field commanders’ recommendations and was persuaded by the reasoning behind them, I was prepared to go all out to provide what they needed.
My lack of understanding of the actual number of troops required for a surge of five brigades led me to underestimate the overall size of the surge in my discussions with the president. The 21,500 represented just the combat brigades but not the so-called enablers—the personnel for helicopters, medevac, logistics, intelligence, and the rest—that would add nearly 8,500 more troops, for a total surge of about 30,000. (Never again would I forget about the enablers.) When first told about the larger numbers, I said, “This is going to make us look like idiots. How could military professionals not have anticipated this?” I sent an impatient memo to Deputy Secretary England and Pete Pace afterward asking if we were now confident in our estimate of the required support capability: “Explaining the most recent additional OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom] forces and associated funding will be challenging enough. We simply cannot afford another surprise in the weeks ahead.… I do not want to be hit with another request three weeks from now.” I was taking a crash course in asserting myself with senior officers.
We agreed in Crawford that the Iraqis would take the lead in quelling sectarian violence, but we would insist on the government’s allowing the Iraqi army to carry out operations in a nonsectarian way—for example, the politicians (meaning Maliki) would not try to secure the release of politically “protected individuals.” We would support the Iraqi forces even while continuing aggressive operations against al Qaeda in Iraq, the Shia kill squads from Jaish al Mahdi, and the Sunni insurgency. The point was made that most of our casualties were coming not from the sectarian violence but rather from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted by these groups. We also discussed an increase in the size of the Army and Marine Corps, but no decisions were made by the time we left Crawford.
On January 2, 2007, I reached Petraeus in his car on a Los Angeles freeway. He pulled into a parking lot to take the call, and I asked him if he would take the job as commander in Iraq. He didn’t hesitate in saying yes. Like me, I don’t think he had any idea how hard the road ahead would be, both in Iraq and in Washington.
On January 3, I met with the president to discuss two key personnel issues. I wanted him to know that Casey would likely face a lot of criticism in the confirmation process, though I thought it would work out if we stood strongly behind him. I also raised the question of who should succeed Abizaid, who was retiring. I said there was a need for a fresh perspective at Central Command and offered three names—General Jack Keane, retired vice chief of staff of the Army (and a key proponent of the surge); Marine General Jim Jones, who had just retired as commander of European Command and supreme allied commander Europe; and Admiral William “Fox” Fallon, commander of Pacific Command. I told him that Pace and others had told me that Fallon was perhaps the best strategic thinker in the military. I observed that in dealing with many of Centcom’s challenges—Iran, the Horn of Africa, and others—the Navy had a big role to play. I also pointed out that the commander of Centcom would be Petraeus’s boss, and I thought we would need a strong and seasoned four-star officer to make that work. Centcom would be Fallon’s third position as a four-star. Fallon would also be the first admiral ever to command there, which I liked because I thought no command should “belong” to one or another service. The president accepted my recommendation, which included pairing Fallon with Army Lieutenant General Marty Dempsey, just coming back from Iraq, as the deputy commander. He also wanted to accelerate the announcement of the changes in leadership both in Baghdad and at Central Command to January 5 so he could send the message that the entire team dealing with Iraq was being changed (including a new ambassador).
At that meeting, I also told the president that I was working on a proposal to increase the size of t
he Marine Corps by 27,000 for a total of 202,000, and the Army by 65,000 for a total of 547,000. The increase would be spread over several years, with a first-year cost of $17 to $20 billion and a five-year cost of $90 to $100 billion. I also reported that I was looking at our policies with regard to mobilization of the National Guard and Reserves, particularly to ensure that their deployments were limited in duration—probably to a year—and to make sure they had the promised time at home between deployments. He immediately told me to proceed.
The president held a last National Security Council meeting on the new strategy in Iraq on January 8. My briefing materials framed just how dire the situation had become: “The situation in Baghdad has not improved, despite tactical adjustments. The police are ineffective or worse. Force levels in Baghdad are inadequate to stabilize the city. Iraqi support for the Coalition has declined substantially, partly due to the failure of security over the past year. We are on the strategic defensive and the enemy [Sunni insurgents and Shia militias] has the initiative.” We had to face four key realities: (1) the primary challenge was extremists from all communities; the center was eroding and sectarianism was spiking (a change from when the Sunni-based insurgency was the primary challenge); (2) political and economic progress in Iraq was unlikely absent a basic level of security; (3) Iraqi leaders were advancing their sectarian agendas as hedging strategies, in pursuit of narrow interests and in recognition of past history; and (4) the tolerance of the American people for the effort in Iraq was waning (a gross understatement, if there ever was one). I think the meeting was, in some ways, a final gut check, for everyone at the table, of the necessity of undertaking the surge and changing our primary military mission from transition to protecting the Iraqi people. The president needed to know the team would hang together in what was certain to be a very rough period ahead.
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War Page 6