The War Within (37 page)

"We now know that the way forward is up to the Iraqis," the president said. "The issue is, how fast can they take responsibility?"

"It'll be summer before we could expect them to do this," General Casey said from Baghdad via the secure video.

Summer? Rice thought. That was seven or eight months down the road. There wouldn't be any Baghdad left by then.

Bush said they needed some kind of "bridge" to get the Iraqi army to the point where they could take over. "What do we need for them to commit? Is there a forcing mechanism? If they don't commit, there won't be success. So how do we get them in?"

From Baghdad, Khalilzad said, "They understand they need to commit. The issue is JAM"óthe violence-prone Madhi Armyó"They know they have to confront JAM, but they haven't finally decided."

"Waiting till the summer is a cop-out," Bush said, firmly and quickly making a decision that had been batted about by the principals for hours beforehand. "Look, we can sit with Maliki. We can develop a plan so this whole thing can happen sooner. We can't wait till the summer. Do we dare go after the JAM with force?" he asked.

No one answered. Going after JAM, a militia with potentially as many as 70,000 members, would be a monumental undertaking and put the United States squarely in the middle of the sectarian warfare.

The intelligence indicated that Maliki increasingly realized that the Mahdi Army could ultimately undo him.

"How do we give him the responsibility," the president asked, "which we all say he has to have, without failing?"

Hadley thought the president's line of questioning was on the mark.

Others seemed to agree that going after JAM would have to be an Iraqi decision but that U.S. forces could help.

"So what do we do in the interim?" the president asked. "What does he lack?"

Some suggested that Maliki lacked the political will because he had enough military force to deal with JAM with U.S. support.

"We can force it, but there are high risks," Bush said. "One guy can determine the way forward." It was an acknowledgment that Maliki's actions were critical to the situation. "We need to have, in a reasonable time, a plan for taking on the militias before my speech"óhis plan to unveil a new strategy in a nationally televised speech. "We need to give the ball to the Iraqis, but on a scheduled timetable. We're committed on going after al Qaeda and the Saddamists. We're committed to protecting them against Iran and Syria on the border. The issue is sectarian violence and the militias."

Overall, Bush said, the stakes were too high to "gamble" that the Iraqis would be able to handle the responsibilities of curbing sectarian violence on their own. If they failed, the Iraqi armed forces could fracture, and the Maliki government could collapse. While the United States would not unilaterally take on the mission of ending sectarian violence, he said he had decided on proposition one. America would help the Iraqis do so until they could do it on their own.

In a later interview, Bush told me he saw his options in stark terms: "One was kind of pull out of Baghdad and if it burnt down, so be it, so long as it doesn't spread. And the other was, get in there and get after it and make it work.

"And I obviously chose the latter."

T
he NSC gathered at 7 A.M. on Saturday, December 9, with Casey and Khalilzad on secure video.

The general and the ambassador were scheduled to meet with Maliki the next day. They said they anticipated he would ask for additional Iraqi forces and more help from U.S. Special Forces. In addition, they said Maliki believed he was winning over Iraqi moderates.

"Isn't it part of the deal for Maliki to go after Sadr?" the president asked. "He needs to go after him and say he's going after him."

No, Casey and Khalilzad said. Maliki would say he was going after militias and those who break the law. He wouldn't single out Sadr, who still had ministers in the government and had been in a dialogue with Maliki at one point. Sadr and his Mahdi Army were too powerful. But Maliki would go after JAM under the pretext of going after the militias. This, in turn, would allow the United States to go after JAM and the militias.

"How does this all differ from where we are now?" Bush asked.

"The difference," Casey said, "is we're going to do it. We're going to have an operational plan. We're going to have a timeline for doing it." Maliki would "declare on the 18th of December that by a specific date, if the militia don't stop carrying weapons, stop the violence against civilians and accept the DDR"ódisarmament, demobilization and reintegrationó"then there will be a joint operation in January that we are planning now."

After the previous day's NSC meeting, Bush and Hadley had talked about some downsides of helping with sectarian violence. So the president asked, "What if JAM won't fight? What if they adopt the Hezbollah model of protesting the government? We don't want our troops in riot control. That's for the Iraqis. And if they go to ground"óinto hidingó"it has to be a most wanted list of people to track down. How do you fight a ragtag group that goes to ground?"

"We will restore Iraqi control of Sadr City," Casey said. "It'll be clear when people are standing outside the law. If you see weapons, you can pick people up. Sadr City is now a safe haven."

Hadley said that would be a big test for Maliki. If he went into the Mahdi Army's stronghold of Sadr City and targeted fellow Shia, it would demonstrate some nonsectarian bona fides.

"Well, if we go into Sadr City," Bush asked, "who goes in? How? Do we have enough forces to go in? Whose forces? Who stays behind after we go in? We're not going to sit there. Who stays behind? Us? Iraqis? What's the concept here?"

"We would work on him to set the political conditions," Casey told him. "Then we would go through the areas with significant JAM presence first. We'd reposition Iraqi and coalition forces from within Iraq. We would preposition two brigades in Kuwait if the action spreads outside Baghdad. We don't need to see a repetition of April and August of '04." That was when the United States had gone after the JAM, touching off violence throughout Iraq.

"Who holds after we go in?" Bush asked, zeroing back on Sadr City. "Iraqi forces? Is it the police? Is it the army?"

He was told a mix of Iraqi army, Iraqi national police and some local Iraqi police.

"It has to be successful," Bush said. "To the extent that we rely on police, that's a problem. Should we add more Iraqi army? Should we fold the national police into the army?"

"We need to be realistic," the president went on. "We need to have a realistic time frame and a criteria to judge Maliki's intentions. Once we go down this road, if there's not 100 percent effort toward achieving the goal, we're going to need to be prepared to do something dramatically different."

A voice from outside the usual group spoke up. "Look, Mr. President, I agree," said Treasury Secretary Paulson. He was there at Hadley's request. "How much time do we have, and how many bites at the apple do we have? Do we need to develop more radical options and have them ready?" He mentioned Rice's option, in which the military would intervene only if violence reached genocidal levels. He suggested that the president not wait too long. "Make a judgment about Maliki. But my experience is people don't change much."

Hadley knew that the president's view was somewhat different, particularly concerning Maliki. He believed he had helped Maliki change and grow in his job.

And now Bush sprang to the Iraqi prime minister's defense. "Maliki's right when he says he doesn't have enough tools to do the job," he said. "We need to take that excuse away from him. We need to give him the right tools. But I will be making the decisions, and the goal is radical action to achieve victory."

For Hadley, that was the headline. But Rice thought otherwise. "It's not just Maliki that's involved here," she cautioned. "Remember, it's not just one man. But we should be challenging the entire moderate establishment:

'Unless you are willing to go after the extremes, we will leave you to fight each other, and we'll go after al Qaeda and secure the borders and you guys can all fight it out. So if you're willing to do it and step up, we'll help. But if you don't, we'll protect our interests.'" Those interests, she said, included preventing Iraq from entirely falling apart and continuing the American campaign against al Qaeda.

Someone mentioned the sensitive intelligence reports, which showed the Iraq security forces were not up to the task of taking on the sectarian violence. Were they expecting the Iraqis to take on too much?

The president said that Maliki, with some legitimacy, had often complained to him about the Iraqi army's equipment.

Quoting the prime minister, the president said, "You run around in APCs [armored personnel carriers] and tanks. We run around in pickup trucks." Maliki also had complained that the bad guys had rocket-propelled grenade launchers, while his army had only AK-47s.

"How can an army instill fear when it looks like the militias they're fighting?" Bush asked. "So we have to tell Maliki that we will give his army a lot of equipment." For more than three years of war, the basic strategy had been to turn over security responsibilities to the Iraqis. But the U.S. military was still not providing the best equipment, and enough of it, for a simple reasonóa basic lack of trust.

The military officers said they would look into their ability to provide more equipment. The Iraqis, it was noted, did have Humvees and armored vehicles in addition to their pickup trucks.

"Iraq should pour all its resources into Baghdad," the president said. He had been told that 33 Iraqi battalions in nine quiet provinces could be moved. "Why not move them to Baghdad?" he asked.

"We're doing that," Casey told him.

"Will Maliki have the best available Iraqi forces in Sadr City?" Bush asked.

"They have divisions, one each in the south and west, that are more capable than the ones in Sadr City now," Casey acknowledged. "But they're otherwise engaged in some pretty important stuff."

"How many Iraqi brigades will be involved?" the president asked.

Some 50,000 to 60,000 Iraqi security forces were involved in Baghdad, Casey said. That was three times the number of U.S. troops in the capital.

Bush was surprised. "What portion of the army are the most capable Iraqi forces?" he asked. "Do we need more American troops if Maliki agrees to do this?"

That, of course, was the primary question, but no one offered a direct answer. Casey instead said they were considering martial law.

The president, meanwhile, was focused on the number of troops. "We need to understand if we can have more troops in both Anbar and Baghdad," the president said. "It's the other shoe."

Hadley realized that Bush wanted more troops in both places and was trying to show where he was going.

But the discussion returned to Sadr City, and it was noted that many Shia viewed the JAM as protectors.

The NSC seemed to agree that there was going to be a battle for Baghdad one way or another. Once begun, it would have to go to the finish. Bush said he agreed with the suggestion that they would need additional air and naval power in the region to deter Iran, given Iran's support for and connections to the JAM and other Shia extremists.

Referring to Gates and Pace, he added, "Bob and Pete need to think seriously about this. But what does it mean? If something happened, if Iran calls our bluff, how will we respond? Once Bob is sworn in, Pete, Bob and John"óAbizaidó"need to come in and brief me on this."

"We need a strong message to Iran to stop fooling around," said Cheney.

The conversation returned to Maliki. "We need a deft touch to get Maliki to the position where he succeeds," the president said. "It doesn't mean cramming it down Maliki's throat. We want him to succeed, and we need to help him to get there."

Rice repeated her frequent warning to the Iraqis, that they needed to hang together or they would hang separately from lampposts.

"We need something to deter Iran and Syria," said Cheney, "and that's important not just for Iraq but for the region and for Lebanon, too."

* * *

"Maliki needs to announce to his people and to our people that he's going against all who act outside the law, that he's asked the coalition for help," the president said. "And Maliki then needs to announce the plan that you're going to help him develop in a speech to the nation." Maliki's speech should be a day or two before Bush's speech.

"Iraqi forces would need to be in the lead. What does that mean? Do the Iraqis have the forces?" Bush asked.

"We want the Iraqis to take ownership," Casey told him. "They have the command and control. They have enough forces. But the issue is reliability. We're working through it. And the result may mean that they have to lean more on coalition forces."

"How will we ensure Maliki will see it through?" the president asked.

It was suggested they start with the plan that Maliki had submitted in Amman.

"If the politics get hot, will the Iraqi leadership stick to it?" asked the president.

Casey and Khalilzad reported that there were conflicting pressures. The Iraqi government wanted to do it. But they were going to want to minimize the political cost. So Maliki would say it needed to be his plan, his troops, as much as possible against all elements, not just JAM. And when they briefed the plan, they would have to run through the contingencies with Maliki.

"We can't have him back out once he sees the plan," Bush said, "especially if it isn't until a couple days before my speech. If he needs more help, will he accept more coalition forces?"

Several said they believed Maliki would accept more coalition forces, but no one had yet discussed the specific number with him.