The War Within (47 page)

Satterfield understood the Saudi king's unease. His country was haunted by the prospect of a "crescent" of largely Shia states to the north, from Iran through Iraq to Syria. Iran was supplying lethal weaponry to insurgents in Iraq and dispatching members of its Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The Americans were aware of this and had said so publicly. The United States had tried to combat Iranian involvement within Iraq's borders, but it had done little or nothing inside Iran. So the Iranians sat taunting America, demonstrating that they had the upper hand. The Saudis, like other Gulf states, feared that the United States not only would quit Iraq but would abandon the region.

Satterfield had a tough and uncomfortable meeting with Abdullah on Sunday, April 22. The United States has handed Iraq to Iran on a golden platter, the king said. "You have allowed the Persians, the Safavids"óthe Shia rulers of Persia in the 16th and 17th centuriesó"to take over Iraq."

Satterfield attempted to counter. Iraq could be a strong independent state.

"I warned you about this," the king said. "I warned the president, the vice president, but your ears were blocked. I have no interest in discussing this further."

Satterfield understood that the king couldn't imagine that a Shia state could be independent of Iran. For the king, a Shia nationalist leader who would work against Iran simply could not exist.

"We're here," Satterfield said, trying to reassure him. "We have been here for 50 years plus. We're not going anywhere. Not only is the president committed in Iraq, I assure you we're committed to the region. That is why we are launching a package of steps." Giant arms sales packages for the Gulf states, for the Egyptians and even for the Israelis were in the works. "These all signal we're here. We're not going anywhere."

The king made clear that the topic of a Shia-run Iraq not allied with Iran was impossible and not worth discussing. It could not exist. The meeting was over.

Satterfield wrote a memo to Rice. She passed it along to the president, who dispatched Cheney to talk to King Abdullah. Cheney was a hero in Saudi Arabia. In 1990, when Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia, the first President Bush had sent Cheney, his defense secretary, to promise that the United States would protect Saudi ArabiaóOperation Desert Shield. Bush senior and Cheney had led the coalition, which prominently included Saudi Arabia, in the successful 1991 Gulf War.

When Cheney arrived in Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah asked about the president's father, also a hero in the kingdom.

During a four-hour meeting that included dinner on May 12, the vice president tried to explain the younger Bush's Iraq policy. But he moved the Saudis precisely zero. With all due respect, Abdullah said, I'm not going to talk about this anymore.

* * *

"I'd like to send a couple of guys out," Fallon told Petraeus that spring. "I'd like them to be flies on the wall. I want them to learn as much as they can. I want them to be as familiar as possible with everything that's going on so we can try to figure out where I need to be in this thing."

"Fine, sir," Petraeus said.

Fallon's team was headed by Rear Admiral James A. Winnefeld Jr., who previously had served as Fallon's executive assistant. Fallon thought Winnefeld was about the smartest person in the military and able to cut through the fog to the core of any problem.

Winnefeld hung around for several weeks, but Petraeus found him clandestine and secretive. Petraeus respected Winnefeld personally, but he had never served in Iraq and seemed to have been given only a brief amount of time to survey the situation. Petraeus didn't think Winnefeld was qualified to construct a new strategy or fully assess the war on the ground.

By the end of his review, Winnefeld had concluded that there were too many U.S. military personnel in Iraq and too many Requests for Forces.

"We are going to ask for what we require until we no longer require it," Petraeus told the rear admiral. He had been sent there to win a war. "If somebody wants to tell us to take [forces] out, they'll have to tell us to take [them] out.

But they're going to have to tell the whole world that they told us to. This is the way it works. If it's a big issue, the American public needs to know."

Winnefeld reported back to Fallon, "If you think for a minute that these guys are going to volunteer to accelerate anything or to shed anybody, forget it. It's not going to happen. It'll have to be directed from above."

* * *

On Wednesday, April 25, the House narrowly passed a $124 billion war spending bill that would require American troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq by October 1. The vote was 218 to 208.

"Last fall, the American people voted for a new direction in Iraq," Speaker Pelosi said. "They made it clear that our troops must be given all they need to do their jobs, but that our troops must be brought home responsibly, safely and soon."

A day later, the Senate approved the bill. Bush vetoed it.

Pelosi could continue to muster votes in the House for other troop withdrawal legislation, but Senate rules required 60 votes to stop a filibuster on nonspending bills, and Senate Democrats, who had only a one-vote majority, never came close to getting that many votes.

Later, at another meeting, Pelosi again reminded the president that the public opposed the war. "They've lost faith and confidence in the conduct of the war." This time she wasn't expecting an answer, and she didn't get one.

"There's something wrong there," she told her staff. A devout, practicing Catholic, she insisted that she prayed for the president. "I say this with great personal, almost affection for him and respect for the office he holds. I respect the office maybe more than he doesÖhe has just decided that he's going to have a tantrum anytime anyone doesn't agree with himÖto just be completely, completely, completely obstinate. Something is wrong. It's not right." She said historians would forever ponder Bush's behavior and try to answer this question: How could a president of the United States hijack the good intentions and fears of the American people?

* * *

The lack of progress three months into the surge wasn't sitting well with many Republicans. Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, who had lost his chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee when the Democrats gained a majority in the fall, was particularly worried. An earnest hard-liner known for doing his homework, Hoekstra had made half a dozen trips to Iraq. He thought the larger war on terror was not getting sufficient attention.

He had been offended during the fall at a White House meeting when one of his colleagues had complained to Bush that the president had not asked for any sacrifice from the American public. "That's nothing more than a code word for raising taxes," Bush had replied. So Hoekstra had spoken privately with Representative John Boehner, the House Republican leader.

"The president is about to lose all Republicans on the Intelligence Committee," he had said. The nine Republicans who knew the most about the dire situation in Iraq had been about to jump ship on the surge decision. Soon, all nine were invited to the White House for a private meeting with Bush. Many voiced deep concerns about the surge.

Where did it come from? What was it about?

Bush listened and gave stock answers about the need to win. Hoekstra had already concluded that the war was a mistake. And he felt the president wasn't really listening to the questions or opinions of members of his own party.

Some questions were about Osama bin Laden. Why did it seem the United States had let up on the search?

Bush insisted that the hunt was continuing, and Hadley assured them that all the issues on their list were getting attention. The hour-and-a-half meeting didn't assuage the Republicans' doubts, but it kept them from staging an open revolt.

* * *

Fallon was haunted by the 1975 decision by Congress to cut off all funding for the Vietnam War. Like many others, including President Gerald Ford, he felt that the funding cut forced too early an American exit. Fallon now feared

"that we're going to flush the toilet, as we managed to do in the '70s in Vietnam, where we actually, tactically, had ourselves in great shape and then we cut the legs out from under the thing by Congress" pulling the plug. "We don't want to be in a position where we've now thrown away three or four years' worth of hard work and we're now walking out." He wanted to find "a position where the American people and the Congress feel that we are exercising due diligence." He wanted to buy time to find a reasonable outcome.

Fallon felt he needed to assess the political climate in Washington. It would have a significant impact on what he could do in the region and specifically in Iraq. He had to find out what was politically tolerable. He knew he had to deal with Congress, and he believed he had a good enough rapport with both Republicans and Democrats that he could get a pretty good sense of where they stood. It didn't take him long to figure out the story on Capitol Hill: Political support for the war had all but vanished.

* * *

Just before 3 P.M. on Wednesday, May 9, 2007, a 60-year-old Iraqi physician with glasses, a salt-and-pepper beard and a passing resemblance to movie director Steven Spielberg entered the West Wing of the White House to visit Steve Hadley. Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, was eager to meet with his American counterpart. He was not happy that the meeting had been expanded to include the Iraqi ambassador to Washington and the deputy prime minister, Barham Salih. He asked an aide, "Find out whether these people invited themselves.

How did they get in my meeting?"

They had been invited by Hadley. Meghan O'Sullivan also sat in.

"What are we going to do, the U.S. and Iraq, in the next nine to 12 months, to put Iraq in the best possible position to avoid having to do a precipitous withdrawal of troops?" Hadley asked them. "What steps do we have to take so that it doesn't appear that the coalition is backing down and so it doesn't appear that Iraq is going to be left high and dry?

"We need concrete steps. We don't want to prematurely terminate the coalition or cause a precipitous withdrawal.

The key, as seen from the United States, for success is a reduction in sectarian violence. I know we have to buy space and time for the completion of the Iraqi security forceóbuilding of its capabilities. Iraq has to continue to be in the lead and successful so that it builds a case for its real sovereignty." Though Iraq technically had been sovereign since June 2004, Hadley was making a point that was known by all. With nearly 170,000 U.S. troops now in the country, Iraq was far from "real sovereignty."

Turning to Shia-Sunni relations, Hadley said they had to "buy the space for political reconciliation."

Salih observed, "We do not have the political framework. It's not in place to be successful. We lack Sunni buy-in."

There was no national figure who could unify the country. "We have no Mandela.

"The bad guys are forcing the agenda." To Salih, that meant the Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda terrorists. "What we have is a proxy war," he said. It was a battle between al Qaeda and the United States on Iraqi soil.

"We have a lot of common ground," Hadley said, "and a lot of work to do. It's late in the game, but the security situation has changed, and we have to take that into account." He was referring to the escalating violence. Turning to Rubaie, who had visited with members of the U.S. Congress, he said, "It's good that you went to Congress. You see how volatile the situation is. You see what a push we're getting to the left on Iraq."

Rubaie agreed.

"No one wants to go to zero," Hadley said, meaning zero U.S. troops in Iraq. "The consequences of failure are unthinkable. But if we don't manage the near term, it'll happen." He said they had to work on five issuesóbudget, constitution, oil, de-Baathification, reconciliation. Iraq's own national budget was a giant problem because about 25

to 30 percent was left unspent, while the United States poured billions into the war. On the Iraqi constitution, he said,

"We thought the constitutional process would yield a grand bargain. And now we're trying to patch it up with moss.

The patches don't add up to enough." It was a discouraging assessment on all fronts. There was a melancholy tone to his next question: "How can we move ahead?"

No one answered.

"We have to dramatize progress," Hadley said. "We need a dramatic event. I don't know what it is." He looked over at Salih and Rubaie. "You'll have to tell me what it is."

The Iraqis offered no ideas.

"Meghan, what have I left out?" Hadley asked.

"You've got to have a dramatic something," O'Sullivan said. "Something with drama."

"There is no single magic wand," Rubaie said. He was sure that by the fall there would be progress on the budget and the oil law and that a date would be set for provincial elections. But Maliki himself did not have the power to do these things. "You," Rubaie said, looking at the Americans, "have to twist arms" at all levels of the Iraqi government.

"The biggest challenge is time," Salih said. "They"óal Qaeda and other extremistsó"can wait us out." He also said that there was a misunderstanding. Al Qaeda and JAMóSadr's Mahdi Armyówere not seen as extreme by many Iraqis.

All the focus on bringing the former Baathists into the government had created problems, he said. "We've managed to turn the Baathists into victims."

"In the long run," Hadley said, "we have to redeploy our forces to strategic bases." Neither the promise of protecting the population nor the surge itself could last indefinitely. "This may mean recalling U.S. troops to the forward operating bases." He said of the governing process, "You do have to bring all of the enemies into the cabinet. You have to come up with a formula." He returned to the theme that made his desperation evident: "But you have to have some visible progress."

Rubaie said that they needed to add amnesty to the list of key issues, meaning insurgents and other anti-government terrorists had to be offered an opportunity to avoid penalty or prison. "This plays to the hard core. But it's probably going to be necessary. If you grant amnesty, with all its disadvantages, they don't have a leg to stand on." It would rob them of their excuses for violent opposition. "You have to take a risk of amnesty. You even have to consider unconditional, general amnesty."