In My Time

by Dick Cheney

  When the chiefs argued that now was not the time to surge forces, I think that part of their objective was to get the notion across to the president that if he was going to order a surge in troops, he was going to have to make a significantly larger investment in our military. It was a point well taken, and in his next budget, the president included funding to increase the size of both the army and the Marine Corps.

  One argument the chiefs made that didn’t go far was the notion that we ought not commit more forces to Iraq because we needed to maintain a reserve force to deploy in the event of an unforeseen contingency somewhere else in the world. The president wasn’t persuaded. He told them his priority was to win the war we were fighting, not hold back out of concern for some potential future war.

  __________

  THROUGHOUT THIS PERIOD, Jack Keane brought important perspective to the matter of what our forces could bear and how far we could push the chiefs. He knew that they would be legitimately concerned about the stress on the force, but he also pointed out that in an all-out global War on Terror, you do what you have to do to win. If you’ve got to go to fifteen-month deployments or eighteen-month deployments or stop-loss orders for the entire force or doubling the size of the force, whatever you’ve got to do you do because the one thing you can’t afford is defeat. With thirty-seven years of service in the army and his experience as vice chief of staff, he was for me personally a real anchor and a source of wisdom. His advice carried a good deal of weight. His view that it was absolutely possible to do what needed to be done without breaking the force went a long way toward giving me and other policymakers a sense that a surge was doable.

  THE PRESIDENT WANTED THE new secretary of defense, Bob Gates, to have a chance to visit Iraq and meet with Generals Casey and Abizaid before any public announcement of a new war strategy. After Gates returned from Iraq, the National Security Council gathered at the president’s ranch in Crawford on December 28, 2006. Bob explained that General Casey had agreed to a surge, but that he wanted no more than two brigades, with additional brigades in the pipeline for deployment if needed. This looked like the kind of compromise solution we had been trying to avoid, and the president decided against it.

  By this time, he had also decided on new military leadership in Iraq. He was going to make General Casey army chief of staff and nominate General David Petraeus to replace him. I thought Petraeus was a superb choice, tough, bright, and competent. Jack Keane, who didn’t offer praise lightly, was one of his biggest fans. The two had been close since 1991, when they had been watching a training exercise at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and a high-velocity round had accidentally struck Petraeus in the chest. Keane stayed by him, helicoptering with Petraeus to the Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, where a cardiothoracic surgeon named Bill Frist—who would later become Senate majority leader—operated on him for nearly six hours.

  Petraeus made it clear that he needed five brigades. So did the general whom the president was nominating to be second in command in Iraq, Ray Odierno, a brilliant, no-nonsense army three-star who would implement the new strategy. Petraeus and Odierno would be joined in Iraq by an extremely talented new ambassador, Ryan Crocker.

  On January 10, 2007, the president announced in a speech to the nation that he was committing twenty thousand additional troops—five brigades—to Iraq, and most of them would go to Baghdad. He was also increasing American forces in Anbar, the home base of al Qaeda in Iraq, by four thousand. The brigades would deploy over time so that it would be summer before we reached full strength.

  The president’s decision was particularly courageous against the drumbeat of criticism we were facing from outside the administration. On December 17, 2006, former secretary of state Colin Powell had said that America was “losing in Iraq” and a “surge cannot be sustained.” Days after the president’s speech, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel declared the surge “a waste of our troops and a waste of our treasure,” and Senator Barack Obama predicted that rather than solving sectarian violence, the surge would increase it.

  Shortly after the additional troops began arriving in Iraq, critics declared that the surge had failed. Perhaps most memorably, in April 2007 Senator Harry Reid said, “This war is lost, and the surge is not accomplishing anything.” While even members of his own party thought Reid had gone too far in declaring America’s defeat, there was certainly hand-wringing on both sides of the aisle, especially among members worried about reelection and concerned that we weren’t seeing results quickly enough.

  Inside the White House and the Pentagon, senior officials began to look for ways to placate the Congress and a hostile media. Although the president had just signed up for the surge, some of his advisors were already talking about bringing at least one brigade home by the end of the year. This was a political recommendation, totally divorced from the situation on the ground, which according to Generals Petraeus and Odierno would require the surged brigades well into 2008.

  On Tuesday morning, May 22, a David Ignatius column appeared in the Washington Post titled “After the Surge: The Administration Floats Ideas for a New Approach in Iraq.” It quoted administration officials on the need to revamp policy in order to attract bipartisan support and to take into account the fact that the surge might not have the stabilizing effect we had hoped. I was very concerned when I read the piece, and I raised it with the president in the Oval Office. “Whoever is leaking information like this to the press is doing a real disservice, Mr. President,” I said, “both to you and to our forces on the ground in Baghdad.” We shouldn’t be suggesting that our war policy was being tailored for political purposes, pieced together to include elements simply because they would attract Democratic support, I said. And we shouldn’t be cutting our commanders off at the knees, suggesting that their strategy would fail before the forces were even in place. “We have to correct this,” I said, “particularly with our generals in the field. They have to know they have the full backing of the president and his top officials and that we will not start pulling troops out before the mission is complete.”

  A short time later Steve Hadley came into my office and closed the door. He told me that he was the source for Ignatius and that he’d talked to him at the instruction of the president. That gave me a moment’s pause, but then I thought it was just as well I hadn’t known. I might have been less forceful about making a case that deserved to be made forcefully. This wasn’t a time for mixed messages.

  A little before 7:00 a.m. on Saturday, May 26, 2007, I boarded Air Force Two for the short flight to New York, where I was scheduled to deliver remarks at the U.S. Military Academy’s commencement ceremonies. The day’s papers were laid out on the table in my cabin, and as I scanned the front-page headlines, a story by David Sanger in the New York Times caught my attention. “White House Is Said to Debate ’08 Cut in Iraq Combat Forces by 50%,” it read. In language making clear that key people inside the administration were sources for the article, the story laid out an administration plan to begin withdrawing well before commanders on the ground thought was wise and to “greatly scale back the mission that President Bush set for the American military when he ordered it in January to win back control of Baghdad and Anbar Province.” It was another major story suggesting that the surge in forces—which was still not complete—would not succeed. The story also indicated that the administration was trimming back because of “growing political pressure.”

  A few hours later under a hazy blue sky I helped present diplomas to the impressive young cadets of the West Point Class of 2007. Their class motto was “Always Remember. Never Surrender.” I found myself wishing that we in Washington could speak so clearly.

  On May 30, toward the end of our weekly secure videoconference with our team in Iraq, the president asked our new ambassador Ryan Crocker and General Petraeus whether they had anything they wanted to add before signing off. General Petraeus, to his great credit, raised the issue of the press reports suggesting that the administration thought
the surge might fail and was looking for ways to bring troops home early. He said that he and General Odierno had been sitting out there in Baghdad reading these reports, looking at each other across the table, and wondering what was going on back in Washington.

  In Baghdad with three of the generals who led us to victory in Iraq, Commander of U.S. forces, General David Petraeus, his deputy and successor, General Ray Odierno, and General Stan McChrystal, who commanded our special operations forces. (Official White Hosue Photo/David Bohrer)

  Bringing up the news stories was a gutsy thing to do, and he did it in a way that was direct but totally nonconfrontational. Exactly right.

  The president was getting some bad advice from those on the staff urging a political compromise for our Iraq strategy. I thought it would be helpful if he spent some time with Jack Keane. On Thursday, May 31, when I’d been scheduled to have my regular weekly lunch with the president, I suggested bringing Jack along, and I asked Steve Hadley to join us as well.

  Jack traveled to Iraq frequently, and he and I had an informal arrangement that he’d stop by my office after he got back from a trip. I wanted to be sure he had the opportunity to pass along information he thought the president should have. Because of ongoing resistance inside the Pentagon and at Central Command to the surge strategy, I also wanted to ensure that General Petraeus’s thoughts and concerns made it all the way up the chain of command.

  Jack was just back from his second trip to Iraq since General Petraeus took over, and as we sat around the table in the president’s private dining room, Jack began by talking about how proud he was of the caliber of our forces. They were the most competent and capable military force in history, he said, and they believed deeply in what they were doing. And even though the president’s decision to surge forces meant longer deployments, more time away from home and families, and higher casualty rates initially, the sense of duty and commitment and pure competence among our forces in the field were just superb.

  In 2006, he said, the enemy had the momentum, but now because of the surge, we had it. He pointed to what was happening in Anbar Province among the Sunni sheikhs. They were forming their own groups, which came to be known as Concerned Local Citizens, or CLCs, and signing on with the Americans to fight al Qaeda. One of the first questions the CLCs were asking our troops was “Are you here to stay this time?” When they believed we were, they got into the fight with us to restore safety and security in their own towns.

  Keane said it was clear that the surge was working, but leaks like those in the New York Times the previous weekend weren’t helpful. To the military leadership in the field such stories looked like a signal that the civilians were getting ready to pull the plug. The president explained that his staff was simply working on options, looking for ways to deal with the political problem we had on the Hill. Steve noted that although the president had just won a war-funding vote by threatening a veto, there was concern that the Democrats might succeed in passing other measures to tie our hands. That’s why we needed to be ready with a new plan, a new direction.

  I made the point that talking about “a new direction” isn’t cost-free. You can’t suggest a shift in strategy in Washington without it having an impact on our troops in the field, I said.

  Jack said that what motivates generals like Petraeus and Odierno is duty. The president gave them a mission. He told them to surge, extend the deployments, and defeat the insurgents. Those generals carry out that mission out of a sense of duty. Now, he said, they may hear from folks back here in Washington who don’t like the policy, and they may hear criticism or skepticism from visiting members of Congress. But it was critically important that they not hear it from their civilian leaders. He stressed the importance of keeping the chain of command knitted together and moving forward with the mission. He said that our troops in the field wouldn’t be much affected by “Plan B” talk, but for our senior commanders it could be corrosive if they thought that civilian leadership had lost confidence in the mission.

  A WEEK LATER SECRETARY GATES announced that he was withdrawing the nomination of Pete Pace for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His nomination, which should have been routine, was pulled after Secretary Gates asked the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin of Michigan, to survey other Democratic senators and let Gates know how the nomination would be received. Not surprisingly, Levin reported back that the confirmation hearings would focus on the last four years of the war. Gates decided to pull the nomination rather than have a fight. When he chose Admiral Mike Mullen to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs, it meant that Gates’s original choice for vice chairman, Admiral Ed Giambastiani, would have to step aside since those positions can’t both be occupied by individuals from the same service. As a result Gates’s decision not to fight for Pete Pace resulted in the loss of two terrific officers who had served the nation with honor during a time of war. I thought it was a bad call.

  On one of my first visits to Walter Reed to spend time with our wounded warriors, I had invited Pete Pace to come with me. We spent a morning together going room to room, and there was an emotional connection between Pete and those young soldiers and marines that I’d never seen with any other senior officer. His connection to these young men and his enormous admiration and respect for them were deep and sincere and returned to him many times over.

  I had first met Admiral Giambastiani when I was on the House Intelligence Committee and he was head of an important submarine command. Extremely smart and highly effective at dealing with both the civilian and military leadership at the Pentagon, Ed had managed through a career of high achievement to maintain a down-to-earth modesty. Secretary Gates got it right at Admiral Giambastiani’s farewell ceremony when he noted that Ed had made an art form of combining distinction and humility.

  I would have fought to keep both of them.

  I WAS ON AIR FORCE TWO flying to Washington on Sunday, July 8, when I got a call from Steve Hadley. The president had called Steve back to Washington from a family vacation, Steve said. He, Dan Bartlett, Ed Gillespie, Karl Rove, and Josh Bolten had been having a series of meetings at the president’s request to try to come up with a change in strategy to satisfy some of the growing opposition on the Hill. I had been in Wyoming for the Fourth of July holiday while the meetings had been going on, but I’m not sure I would have been invited if I had been in town, since I was so opposed to temporizing on the surge in order to placate the Democrats. Not only was this the absolute wrong time to send a message that we were wavering; it wasn’t even good politics. In trying to pacify opponents, we’d drive away supporters who understood the stakes, and in the end the Democrats wouldn’t be appeased. They would simply demand more withdrawals.

  The next morning, I picked up my copy of the New York Times to find another front-page story by David Sanger, this one titled “In White House, Debate Is Rising on Iraq Pullback.” It opened by saying that “White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them.” It reported that while the president and his aides once thought that decisions about the surge could wait until after General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker made a mid-September report on the effectiveness of the strategy, now some aides were recommending the president “announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for American troops that would allow for a staged pullback.”

  As we sat in the Oval Office a few hours later for the daily communications session, no one challenged the substance of the piece, though there was speculation about who had leaked it. I made the case that the group was misreading the Congress. I didn’t think the situation was as grim as they thought it was. I went back to my office and called Trent Lott, the Senate Republican whip, who was not at all pessimistic. He said he thought the degree to which Republicans were falling away from the president had been hyped by the press. The situation wasn’t nearly as dire as the New Yo
rk Times described it. Trent said he wanted to do a formal whip count before giving me a solid answer on the question of how many Republicans we could count on for any Iraq war vote. He told me he would run the traps and get back to me.

  That afternoon, as White House discussions of the strategy continued, I again made the point that compromising now, before Petraeus had a chance to report back, was foolish. The Democrats would simply pocket whatever concessions we made and demand more later.

  I also had an interesting visit from Henry Kissinger that day. He told me that he’d been approached by a couple of Republican senators who asked him if he would take a public position on Iraq, something different from the White House position, to give the Republicans something to endorse. He said they’d told him as many as ten Republican senators were prepared to embrace a new position so long as it was different from the White House view and one that Henry recommended. Henry had refused. He supported the president’s policy.

  The next day, Tuesday, July 10, 2007, I attended the weekly Republican Senate Policy Lunch, and Iraq was the focus. John McCain was just back from Iraq and gave a terrific presentation about why we were on the right course and why it was so important to stay on it. When he finished I was asked to say a few words. My normal practice was just to listen at these lunches, but given the stakes of the Iraq war debate and the indications of dissatisfaction in the Republican Senate ranks, I decided to speak. I echoed John’s assessment that we needed to continue to back Petraeus. I talked about the consequences of failure for the United States and for our allies and the costs of premature withdrawal or retreat. I also reiterated the point that we could not in good conscience compromise on what we knew to be the right policy simply because of political pressure.